IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/20049471096-1102_8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ethical challenges in preparing for bioterrorism: Barriers within the health care system

Author

Listed:
  • Wynia, M.K.
  • Gostin, L.O.

Abstract

Preparedness for bioterrorism poses significant ethical challenges. Although public health ethics and preparedness have received attention recently, health care ethics must also be considered. In epidemics, the health care system assists public health in 3 tasks: detection, containment, and treatment. Detection might fail if all patients do not have access to care, or if physicians do not understand their obligation to report infectious diseases to public health authorities. Containment might fail if physicians view themselves only as advocates for individual patients, ignoring their social obligations as health professionals. Treatment might fail if physicians do not accept their professional duty to treat patients during epidemics. Each of these potential ethical barriers to preparedness must be addressed by physicians and society.

Suggested Citation

  • Wynia, M.K. & Gostin, L.O., 2004. "Ethical challenges in preparing for bioterrorism: Barriers within the health care system," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 94(7), pages 1096-1102.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:2004:94:7:1096-1102_8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rubina Ali & Inamullah Jan & Muhammad Shoaib Malik, 2020. "Emerging Health Security Threats and Impact of Bioterrorism on the U.S. National Security," Global Political Review, Humanity Only, vol. 5(1), pages 94-103, March.
    2. Bensimon, Cécile M. & Smith, Maxwell J. & Pisartchik, Dmitri & Sahni, Sachin & Upshur, Ross E.G., 2012. "The duty to care in an influenza pandemic: A qualitative study of Canadian public perspectives," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(12), pages 2425-2430.
    3. Bensimon, Cécile M. & Tracy, C. Shawn & Bernstein, Mark & Shaul, Randi Zlotnik & Upshur, Ross E.G., 2007. "A qualitative study of the duty to care in communicable disease outbreaks," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(12), pages 2566-2575, December.
    4. Garoon, Joshua P. & Duggan, Patrick S., 2008. "Discourses of disease, discourses of disadvantage: A critical analysis of National Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Plans," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(7), pages 1133-1142, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:2004:94:7:1096-1102_8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.