The Legal System Will Play a Key Role in Planning the Response to a Possible Onslaught of the Virus
[T]here is growing consensus that the medical, legal and business communities, along with governments, must mobilize to prepare for a possible avian flu pandemic.
By necessity, the legal system will be a key component in efforts to develop a response. “Lawyers are going to be called upon,” says Hal S. Katz of Austin, Texas, who chairs the Public Health and Policy Interest Group in the ABA Section of Health Law. “And they can either play a role that helps the process and ensures that our communities are safe, or they can get in the way of the responders’ efforts.”
Chuck Ludlam of Washington, D.C., retired counsel to U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., ticks off a number of legal questions that will arise in the event of a major disease outbreak: Who will manage quarantines? Who will enforce them? Can health workers be forced to work in contagious environments? Can the Food and Drug Administration speed up its approval process for untested experimental medicines? Who would cover liability for harm from using those medicines? Can the government force people to be vaccinated?
“The government has power only to the extent that it has power through legal rights,” Ludlam says. “If the legal system is compromised, everything else will be more difficult.”
Details here from the ABA Journal.