Quarantine, isolation and the duty of easy rescue in public health

Giubilini, Alberto; Douglas, Thomas; Maslen, Hannah; Savulescu, Julian

Thus, the duty enforcement requirement provides an independent ethical justification for a principle of reciprocity in public health, which specifies what a state owes to individuals in exchange for their submitting to restraining measures for the sake of the public good.32 As put by Diego Silva and Maxwell Smith, ‘reciprocity maintains that when an individual is subject to a limitation on their human rights or freedoms for the sake of a public health emergency, the State must support and compensate that individual for his or her loss, so they are not unduly harmed’;33 according to them, the principle of reciprocity demands, for example, that ‘society provides resources such as food and water to those burdened by restrictive measures like isolation or quarantine’.34 We think the duty enforcement requirement has similar implications, and that it can justify a principle of reciprocity in public health.