Searching Eyes: Privacy, the State, and Disease Surveillance in America (California Milbank Books on Health and the Public)

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.

"This is a stunning book—comprehensive and perceptive. Searching Eyes: Privacy, the State, and Disease Surveillance in America is a major achievement in interdisciplinary scholarship and historical interpretation, and will remain the definitive work on this important subject for many years to come."—Theodore M. Brown, Ph.D., Professor of History, Community and Preventive Medicine, and Medical Humanities, University of Rochester

"A landmark in the history and ethics of public health. Meticulously researched, it provides the first overarching account of the evolution of public health surveillance in the United States, from the debates over tuberculosis and venereal disease at the start of the 20th century to the tensions over AIDS and bioterrorism at century's end. Fairchild, Bayer, and Colgrove provide insights not only into how concerns about privacy shaped the politics of public health but also about how the need for protection and services could fuel the demand for extending surveillance. Searching Eyes is invaluable not only for those who want to understand the past but for those who will be called on to make and debate public health policy in the future."—Larry O. Gostin, author of Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (2nd ed, forthcoming 2008)

Preface: the politics of privacy, the politics of surveillance 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 in a new era of privacy Conclusion: an enduring tension. 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. The authors 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 Presents the history of public health surveillance in the United States to span more than a century of conflict and controversy. This work situates the tension inherent in public health surveillance in a broad social and political context This history of public health service in the United States spans more than a century of conflict and controversy with the authors situating the tension inherent in public health surveilance in a broad social and political context.