Justice in Medicine and Public Health

Abstract

On the beautifully clear and sun-filled morning of September 11, 2001, just before I went to vote in the New York City primary elections, news came over the car radio that a plane had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. As I drove toward Manhattan after casting my ballot, newscasters reported a second plane crashing into the South Tower. It became instantly clear to everyone that these were acts of terrorism. We were under attack. All around me the behavior of New York City drivers immediately converted from the standard aggressive mode to a remarkably accommodating style, and in a dramatically uncharacteristic way cars yielded to make way for the emergency vehicles that were suddenly racing down the highway. Only one car surged to follow in their wake.This paper is a revised and shortened version of my chapter, “Justice in Allocations for Terrorism, Biological Warfare, and Public Health” in Public Health Ethics, edited by Michael Boylan, Kluwer; 2004. Portions of this material were presented at the International Bioethics Retreat, Pavia, Italy, June 2003, and at the meetings of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences, Philadelphia, September 2003.