The patient as victim and vector

By M. Pabst Battin

Subjects: Medical policy, Health Policy, World Health, Global Health, Communicable diseases, transmission, Moral and ethical aspects, Prevention, Disease Transmission, World health, Communicable diseases, Disease Outbreaks, Epidemics, Infectious Disease Transmission, Ethics, Bioethics, Prevention & control

Description: Bioethics emerged at a time when infectious diseases were not a major concern. Thus bioethics never had to develop a normative framework sensitive to situations of disease transmission. The Patient as Victim and Vector explores how traditional and new issues in clinical medicine, research, public health, and health policy might look different in infectious disease were treated as central. The authors argue that both practice and policy must recognize that a patient with a communicable infectious disease is not only a victim of that disease, but also a potential vector--someone who may transmit an illness that will sicken or kill others. Bioethics has failed to see one part of this duality, they document, and public health the other: that the patient is both victim and vector at one and the same time. The Patient as Victim and Vector is jointly written by four authors at the University of Utah with expertise in bioethics, health law, and both clinical practice and public healt.