Legal Issues Swell if Swine Flu Spreads

Novel Legal Situations

Escalation to the pandemic stage, say health law experts, could draw officials into truly novel legal situations, such as who can order isolation or quarantine to contain the disease. A wider swine flu outbreak would test unproven legal frameworks ' most less than a decade old ' throughout the states and internationally. Government officials would confront a host of issues, ranging from whether negligent emergency health care providers should face civil liability to whether persons detained, even temporarily because of suspected infection, have any due process rights. And there is still an uncertain relationship between state and federal legal authority. “Here you have swine flu that is a national problem but also a local problem,” said health law scholar Peter Jacobson, director of the Center for Law, Ethics, and Health at the University of Michigan. “Can the federal government come in and declare an emergency in Michigan even if the Michigan state public health authorities don't believe the epidemic has spread sufficiently to declare an emergency? What authority does the CDC have in these matters? It's still ambiguous.”