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  • Published: 13 June 2023
  • ISBN: 9780262545433
  • Imprint: MIT Press Academic
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $110.00
Categories:

War on All Fronts

A Theory of Health Security Justice




An argument for the centrality of rights in health security, and how to apply ethical principles to protecting those rights during public health crises.

An argument for the centrality of rights in health security, and how to apply ethical principles to protecting those rights during public health crises.

In recent years, efforts to respond to infectious diseases have been described in terms of national and global security, leading to the formation of the field of “health security.” In War on All Fronts, Nicholas G. Evans provides a novel theory of just health security and its relation to the practice of conventional public health. Using COVID-19 as a jumping-off point to examine wider issues, including how the US thinks about and prepares for pandemics, Evans shows the flaws in using the “war metaphor" and how any serious understanding of health security must square with human rights—even when a disease poses a threat to national security.      

Evans asks what ethical principles justify declaring, and taking action during, a public health emergency such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The relevant principles, he argues, parallel those of the ethics of armed conflict. Just war theory, properly understood, begins with pacifism and a commitment to the right not to be killed and then steps back to ask under what limited conditions it is permissible to kill. In a similar way, a just health security must also begin with the idea that public health should hold human rights sacrosanct and then ask under what limited conditions other concerns might prevail. Evans’s overall goal is to formulate a guide to action, particularly as the world deals with the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Turning to the transition from war back to peace in public health, he looks at reparation, rebuilding, and the accountability of actors during the crisis.

  • Published: 13 June 2023
  • ISBN: 9780262545433
  • Imprint: MIT Press Academic
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $110.00
Categories:

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Praise for War on All Fronts

"[Nicholas Evans] is familiar and fluent with the history and contemporary scholarship on just war theory, and also demonstrates technical competence in matters of public health. He is well-positioned to bring lessons from just war theory to bear on the ethics of public health. COVID-19 presents a unique case study for the fruitful application of those lessons to an ongoing and developing health crisis."
-- Professor Duncan Purves, Department of Philosophy, University of Florida

"This work is highly original and written by a scholar with a rare set of expertise in both public health ethics and military ethics, ideally placed to author a book on this topic."
-- Euzebiusz Jamrozik, PhD, The Ethox Centre, University of Oxford

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