Plagues, Products, and Politics: Emergent Public Health Hazards and National Policymaking

by Christopher H. Foreman

Overview

"Despite enduring limitations and flaws, public health in the United States today enjoys impressive successes compared with both earlier eras and less developed countries. Yet a recurrent, often harrowing feature of the public health landscape has been the sudden emergence of a potentially widespread threat that promises serious harm, and perhaps death, to its victims. These threats include both infectious diseases and product-related hazards. This book examines the U.S. government's handling of such threats to public health and assesses its capacity to respond effectively.

The complex and vitally important political and institutional side of such problems has received less frequent attention than it deserves. Focusing on activity devoted to the discovery, investigation, containment, and prevention of disease in the population at large, Christopher Foreman shows how uncertainty and politics complicate crucial stages of policy response, and why that response is easily misinterpreted.

Although AIDS is a prominent case study, this is not a book about AIDS alone. Other public health hazards discussed are Lyme disease, swine flu, Legionnaires' disease, Reye's syndrome, silicone breast implants, cyanide-laced Tylenol, toxic shock syndrome, and vaccine injury. Taken together, such hazards are distinctive for their relatively sudden emergence on the public health agenda and their propensity to generate visible victims quickly.

Foreman explores the important policy tasks associated with each of these threats and discusses the national government's multiple roles as investigator, educator, regulator, researcher, and funder for these health problems. He calls for a stronger overall regime of public health and a more energetic program of surveillance to identify problems quickly and respond appropriately.

"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815728757
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/01/1994
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Christopher H. Foreman Jr. is a senior fellow in the Governmental Studies program at the Brookings Institution.

Editorial Reviews

Using specific examples of public health hazards that have emerged in recent years, the author explores the institutions, the tools that they employ to detect and intervene, and the political, social, and technical constraints that limit their response to these hazards. The author seeks to illuminate the often competing interests that are inherent in and unleashed by specific hazards and that often preclude the development of ideal public policy. The issues raised are unquestionably important ones. Last, he examines the feasibility of enhancing government's response to emergent health hazards through a variety of measures. The book is directed at those involved in formulating public health policy at the governmental level, but it is of interest to a broader audience of public health workers, students, politicians, and journalists. The author is a specialist in the study of American politics and has been working on public health and regulatory issues at Brookings Institution since 1989. The book is attractively bound and well organized. The references are current and pertinent. The book is well written, and the specific examples are fascinating and render the book exceedingly readable. The work provides some much needed balance to the numerous works that have criticized the government's response to AIDS and other public health hazards. At times, however, it swings too far the other way, appearing to suggest that many flawed decisions made in the setting of these new threats are in some sense understandable and excusable. It is disappointing that possible approaches to improve governmental response are only superficially discussed. The author does emphasize enhanced national and globalsurveillance as an essential and politically feasible weapon against these emergent hazards. A larger issue, the need to promote policy driven by science, and not by prevailing attitudes and political considerations, remains largely unaddressed. An expanded discussion of how best to promote science-based policymaking by enhancing the ways that risk information is communicated to the press, the public, and the government would have increased the value of this book. Nonetheless, it remains a fascinating discussion of the difficulties of attaining an ideal, practical, and acceptable response to emergent public health hazards.

Ronald C. Hershow

Examines how the US government responds to public threats that appear suddenly, create visible victims, and spread quickly through the population. Examples are communicable diseases such as AIDS, Legionnaires' disease, and drug-resistant TB; and dangers related to products, such as injurious vaccines, silicone breast implants, and cyanide-laced Tylenol. Calls for stronger national and global surveillance to identify problems sooner. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews