Although unprecedented in scope and beyond all our life experiences, sweeping social distancing measures are not without historical precedent. Historically, racism, stigma, and discrimination resul...

What justified the Center for Disease Control's1999 determination to require HIV casereporting? Why were names necessary? Why didopponents view the reporting of names with suchalarm? This paper retells the history of theencounters over HIV reporting that had occurredsince the mid 1980s. In placing HIV reportingwithin a larger context, however, we understandthe clash between privacy and public healthnecessity as a complex issue, both inhistorical and contemporary practice. Byunderscoring the similarities and differenceswith the histories of surveillance for otherinfectious diseases, vaccination, occupationaldiseases, cancer, (...) and birth defects, and HIVreporting internationally, we can betterunderstand the implications of the HIV debatefor an ethics of surveillance more generally. (shrink)

Surveillance serves as the eyes of public health. It has provided the foundation for planning, intervention, and disease prevention and has been critical for epidemiology research into patterns of morbidity and mortality for a wide variety of disease and conditions. Registries have been essential for tracking individuals and their conditions over time. Surveillance has also served to trigger the imposition of public health control measures, such as contact tracing, mandatory treatment, and quarantine. The threat of such intervention and long-term monitoring (...) has provoked alarm and rendered surveillance suspect for those concerned about the unwarranted exercise of state authority in the name of public health. Thus the history of surveillance has been bounded by promise of disease control and a specter of intrusion. In this article we address the tension between the public's need for knowledge as a foundation for rational policy-making and the centrality of norms of privacy for democratic societies. (shrink)

Surveillance serves as the eyes of public health. It has provided the foundation for planning, intervention, and disease prevention and has been critical for epidemiology research into patterns of morbidity and mortality for a wide variety of disease and conditions. Registries have been essential for tracking individuals and their conditions over time. Surveillance has also served to trigger the imposition of public health control measures, such as contact tracing, mandatory treatment, and quarantine. The threat of such intervention and long-term monitoring (...) has provoked alarm and rendered surveillance suspect for those concerned about the unwarranted exercise of state authority in the name of public health. Thus the history of surveillance has been bounded by promise of disease control and a specter of intrusion. In this article we address the tension between the public's need for knowledge as a foundation for rational policy-making and the centrality of norms of privacy for democratic societies. (shrink)