Featuring
Michael Selgelid
Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Australian National University
Christian Barry
Australian National University; Ethics & International Affairs Editorial Board; Global Ethics Fellow Alumnus
Matt Peterson
The Atlantic; Former Ethics & International Affairs Assistant Editor
Can we infringe individual rights to promote public health? Should, say, people be allowed to decide for themselves when they are too infectious to get on a plane?
Can we infringe individual rights to promote public health? Should, say, individuals be allowed to determine for themselves when they are too infectious to get on a plane? What happens when an individual contracts a new disease that is of unknown virulence? How do we deal with patients who don’t take their prescriptions correctly and risk allowing dangerous pathogens to mutate?
These urgent questions are the domain of the bioethics of infectious disease. On this episode of Public Ethics Radio, we are aided in the search for answers by the philosopher and tuberculosis expert Michael Selgelid.