Public Health Interventions Need to Meet the Same Standards of Medical Ethics as Individual Health Interventions

Abstract

ways of regulating a particular public health risk that have a better balance of moral benefits over moral costs. Costs to liberty are only one of the relevant factors. The very probable large costs to human life through waiting to see whether education and labeling policies are effective ways of reducing trans fat intake is also a relevant factor. Resnik provides no reason to think that the moral costs associated with these very probable deaths are smaller than those associated with the infringement of liberty. Moreover, invoking the “principle of the least restrictive alternative” in public health regulation seems to be either almost entirely superfluous, or to involve an illicit form of double counting. If it means that we should adopt the least restrictive alternative out of the ones that have already been singled out as offering the best balance of moral benefits over moral costs, then presumably it can only operate as a tie breaker, and so will be unable to do the work Resnik requires. 1 But if it is supposed to play a substantive role (as Resnik seems to imagine it will), then it seems to be clearly illicit, given that liberty has already been weighed in the balance against the other goods at the stage of working out which policies are proportional and necessary. Liberty is an important value, but it is not so important that it ought to be counted multiple times.