Is Liberty Bad for Your Health? Towards a Moderate View of the Robust Coequality of Liberty and Health
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-1-2011
Description
This article challenges the idea that the priority of liberty poses a threat to individual and population health. While acknowledging there are cases in which liberty does indeed pose a threat to the health of individuals and populations, I argue that the tension between liberty and health is overstated and that much can be done to relieve this tension. Indeed, liberty and health can and should be viewed as co-equal values in our broader conception of health justice. My thesis is moderate to the extent it acknowledges limits to the coequal status of these twin values; robust to the extent it conceives legitimate health interventions as the outcome of complex and multiperspectival processes of deliberative testing.
Citation Information
Allen, Michael. 2011. Is Liberty Bad for Your Health? Towards a Moderate View of the Robust Coequality of Liberty and Health. Public Health Ethics. Vol.4(3). 260-268. https://doi.org/10.1093/phe/phr017 ISSN: 1754-9973