Searching eyes : privacy, the state, and disease surveillance in America / Amy L. Fairchild, Ronald Bayer, James Colgrove ; with Daniel Wolfe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fairchild, Amy L.

Contributor:

Bayer, Ronald.

Colgrove, James Keith.

Wolfe, Daniel, 1960-

Series:

California/Milbank books on health and the public ; 18.

California/Milbank books on health and the public ; 18

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Public health surveillance.

Privacy, Right of.

Population Surveillance.

United States.

Confidentiality.

Health Policy--history.

Privacy.

Public Health Practice--history.

Medical Subjects:

Population Surveillance.

United States.

Confidentiality.

Health Policy--history.

Privacy.

Public Health Practice--history.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 342 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press ; New York : Milbank Memorial Fund, [2007]

Summary:

This is the first history of public health surveillance in the United States to span more than a century of conflict and controversy. The practice of reporting the names of those with disease to health authorities inevitably poses questions about the interplay between the imperative to control threats to the public's health and legal and ethical concerns about privacy. Authors Amy L. Fairchild, Ronald Bayer, and James Colgrove situate the tension inherent in public health surveillance in a broad social and political context and show how the changing meaning and significance of privacy have marked the politics and practice of surveillance since the end of the nineteenth century.

Contents:

Preface: the politics of privacy, the politics of surveillance

Introduction: surveillance and the landscape of privacy in twentieth-century America

Opening battles: tuberculosis and the foundations of surveillance

Raising the veil: syphilis and secrecy

The right to know: detection, reporting, and prevention of occupational disease

The right to be counted: confronting the "menace of cancer"

Who shall count the little children? from "crippled kiddies" to birth defects

AIDS, activism, and the vicissitudes of democratic privacy

Counting all kids: immunization registries and the privacy of parents and children

Panoptic visions and stubborn realities in a new era of privacy

Conclusion: an enduring tension.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-327) and index.

ISBN:

9780520252028

0520252020

9780520253254

0520253256

OCLC:

80019812