Assignment #4

In this article Miss Kirk was quarantined in her house because she had been afflicted with leprosy. In this instance she was still allowed to live in the city even though she was afflicted with leprosy. The board of health wanted to move her out of the city into the pest house which was located near the city dumping grounds and was a very unpleasant place. She wanted either to stay quarantined in her house since she had made no effort to violate the quarantine or have a cottage erected for her isolation instead of staying in the pest house. The difference between her quarantine and her isolation is that when quarantined she is still living in the city and if she was isolated she would be moved out of the city to the pest house. The definitions of quarantine and isolation say that quarantine is for a person who has been exposed and isolation is for a person who has been infected.

The board of health has the right to decide when a person should be quarantined as is what happened in this scenario. Miss Kirk agreed with their quarantine and had not argued it or tried to violate it. The reason she argued was because she did not want to have to live in the pest house which she thought was unfair and unreasonable. In her opinion the isolation was a violation of her rights which is why she argued against it. I think that the board was right to quarantine her because her disease was contagious and it was a public health issue which most likely saved many other afflictions. But as stated in the article the quarantine could not last forever and they were looking to isolate her, but it was unreasonable to have her isolated in the pest house which is why the court granted a temporary injunction.

In this case I think that Miss Kirk was right to take her case to the court and argue that it was unjust to have her isolated in the pest house. The Board of Health was right to quarantine her and should have the responsibility of deciding when to isolate and quarantine people. However the Board of Health was not right in the sense that they tried to put her in the pest house which was a vile place and not a place for a person like Miss Kirk. This was an error in protecting the rights of an individual and in my opinion this is more appropriate than if they were to commit an error in protecting the rights of a community. If they had not demanded that Miss Kirk be isolated and kept the quarantine then she could have infected many other individuals and it could have had a much larger impact on the society. It is more important to protect the rights of the society in public health regards because of the catastrophic repercussions it could have if the disease was to get out of hand. If that were to happen then not only would the rights of the community be violated but the rights of many individuals would also be violated when hundreds if not thousands of people had to be quarantined and isolated instead of a single person like Miss Kirk.