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Biomedical subjects

Ronald Bayer

Publications and source records attributed to Ronald Bayer.

33 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed2002

Tobacco, commercial speech, and libertarian values: the end of the line for restrictions on advertising?

In June of 2001, the Supreme Court overturned a set of antitobacco measures adopted by the state of Massachusetts designed to protect young people from advertising. Once again, the court expressed its hostility toward measures designed to restrict commercial speech in the name of the social good. In so doing, the court underscored the enduring tension between the libertarian and social welfare dimensions of contemporary democracy and placed into relief the divisions within the American liberal tradition.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Science, politics, and ideology in the campaign against environmental tobacco smoke.

The issue of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and the harms it causes to nonsmoking bystanders has occupied a central place in the rhetoric and strategy of antismoking forces in the United States over the past 3 decades. Beginning in the 1970s, anti-tobacco activists drew on suggestive and incomplete evidence to push for far-reaching prohibitions on smoking in a variety of public settings. Public health professionals and other antismoking activists, although concerned about the potential illness and death that ETS might cause in nonsmokers, also used restrictions on public smoking as a way to erode the social acceptability of cigarettes and thereby reduce smoking prevalence. This strategy was necessitated by the context of American political culture, especially the hostility toward public health interventions that are overtly paternalistic.

Civil Rights↗
PubMed1990

AIDS and the future of reproductive freedom.

The specter of pediatric AIDS fundamentally challenges elements of the liberal ideological basis of women's reproductive freedom. Many public health officials hold that preventing transmission of HIV from mother to fetus requires efforts to discourage pregnancy by infected women. For over two decades, however, genetic counselors, feminists, and medical ethicists have stressed the importance of nondirective counseling in the context of reproductive choice. The question now confronted by American society is whether it will be possible to frame an ideology of reproductive choice that recognizes the limits of liberal individualism, while preserving the basic features of reproductive freedom.

AIDS Serodiagnosis↗
PubMed1986

AIDS, power, and reason.

The AIDS epidemic at once challenges the biological, social, and political fabric of American life. Individual liberty and communal welfare are always in a state of tension in public health policy. AIDS-specific fears, merged with common distrust for scientific authority, have led to appeals to coercive state power. Others counter with equally illusory promises of voluntarism and education. In fashioning new policies we must preserve a social capacity for reasoned analysis and public discourse.

AIDS Serodiagnosis↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Bioterrorism, public health, and the law.

The controversy over the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act has underscored the enduring tension in public health between guarding the common welfare and respecting individual liberty. The current version of the act, crafted in response to extensive public commentary, attempts to strike a balance between these values but has failed to allay the concerns of many civil libertarians and privacy advocates. Although the debates over the model act have been triggered by the threat of bioterrorism, they illustrate broader philosophical differences, with profound implications for all realms of public health policy.

Bioterrorism↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Could it happen here? Vaccine risk controversies and the specter of derailment.

Controversy over vaccine safety has achieved high visibility over the past decade. At the same time, however, levels of coverage for routinely recommended childhood vaccines in the United States are at their highest ever. We examine this apparent paradox. We consider the ways in which concerns over vaccine safety have emerged and diffused through the popular media, legislative hearings, and Internet-based activism. As a case study, we review the controversy over the alleged connection between autism and the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and consider why it had a dramatic effect on the vaccine's acceptance in Great Britain but virtually none in the United States.

Autistic Disorder↗