Tests, pandemics, libraries, unions…

We’re back to cases in Bioethics (after one last report presentation),  beginning with Glenn McGee’s call for more aggressive and routine HIV testing, his concern about the risk of resurrecting a flu pandemic, and his plea for healthcare workers to acknowledge “their civic duty to care for the sick in a time of crisis.” [Lessons from 1918]

Then, a surprising episode of deliberate information-destruction by the EPA leading Glenn to recall the infamous sacking of the Library of Alexandria (as in turn recalled by Carl Sagan).

How do we balance civil liberties with public health, when quarantine seems only prudent?

Do American docs need unions, when they already enjoy “the highest physician salaries in the world”?

Or lawyers, when “medical mistakes cause more deaths than gun violence, bus crashes, and airplane accidents combined”?

And do we need a new Florence Nightingale to remind us that public sanitation and other environmental factors may have a greater positive impact on health than new drugs and medical technologies?