Liberty – American Disasters

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I’d like to start by acknowledging AJ’s post about the tension between protecting public health while still preserving individual liberties. I think that many of the questions he raises are very useful to analyzing this book and I think that the Chapter I read, “Banished Like a Leper” adds something interesting to the discussion. What if the banishment Mary went through provided her with a better quality of life than when she had her freedom? Does this make it more ethical? What if even though she had a better quality of life on North Brother Island, Mary still wanted her freedom, if only to try and clear her name? Does this change anything.

Leavitt starts Chapter 6 by describing the awful conditions that domestic workers faced in Early 20th century Manhattan. Leavitt writes, “A typical day begins at 6:00 AM and did not end until the after dinner cleaning, well into the evening hours. Usually the women were on their feet the entire day.” (Leavitt 164) Mary also often lived with her employers in cramped, dirty, spaces, and when she did not she was living with her only friend, a man named Briehof. While on the island, Mary lived in an approximately 400 square foot cabin. Her time was her own and she started a small cottage business as well as being a biological research assistant. As time went on she was even allowed to leave the island to go shopping and visit friends. She also made multiple close lifelong friends on the island. By many metrics, her quality of life was significantly better in captivity than when she was free.

This brings me back to my initial questions, does it make it ethical to hold someone forcibly if you are “improving their quality of life.” For me personally I would rather live “imprisoned” on the island than as a virtual slave with no life or personal time in Manhattan. But, can this personal opinion be policy? Mary continued to insist on her innocence and their is evidence that she wanted to be freed from the island for her whole life, even though she knew it wouldn’t happen and so gave up fighting. Is “freedom” really more important than a comfortable life with personal choice? I really don’t know.

So, in the introduction of Judith Walzer Leavitt’s work on Mary Mallon and the public’s perception of her legacy and the impact her story continues to have on public health, she explores the meanings of Mary Mallon’s experiences early in the twentieth century and examines how American society, as a nation and as individuals, has approached taking away the liberty of someone who is sick or a carrier of sickness in the name of protecting the public’s health. (Typhoid Mary, 3) By examining the life of Mary Mallon, the situation she was put in, how officials handled it and the resulting influence her case had on the American public, Judith Leavitt ends up poses a very interesting question that I myself haven’t really considered and don’t necessarily have an answer to. She asks how we have weighted the two values of health and liberty when they come into conflict and address what might be at risk in the balancing. (4)

The issue at hand is the value Americans place on individual liberty and the public health of its citizens. We can all understand the extremely high priority Americans put on our individual freedom from our constitution and the laws that reflect it, however, how high is the value we put on public health? We certainly do not agree with most situations that deprive us of our liberty but this issue is immediately confronted in situations that involve public health and safety. Our society demands the government to always protect our liberty but does it come before our public health? Mary Mallon’s situation is a great case study and should start some serious class discussion with this question. Which one is valued more? Can they be interchangeable? Do we sacrifice the liberty of one to save the whole or does that ruin the constitutional system we created? Does the difference in how people value the human life matter? Leavitt opens the door to a whole bunch of debate without answering the question because she doesn’t even know when the line should be crossed or where. The answer is not black and white. This question deems a very blurry grey line which is perfect for our class discussion. Is the health of our citizens overshadowing the beliefs we built our country on? John Marsh in his blog post also brings up a good point to consider, he wrote, “It informs an understanding of Gilded Age culture’s conduciveness to disaster. More specifically, the isolation of Mary Mallon, if considered a disaster, demonstrates the pitfalls of the Gilded Age belief in the infallibility of science, or scientific method, to solve any problem.” This must all be put in the discussion. Does our unwavering belief in science effect how we decipher the value of human life?

Tag: Liberty

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