Biosurveillance, human rights, and the zombie plague

Abstract

The International Health Regulations (2005) gave the World Health Organization a central role in collecting biosurveillance data and explicitly recognized the importance of human rights for the first time. Human rights and biosurveillance have a complicated relationship with one another though. Surveillance systems are necessary in order to arrest the spread of infectious disease outbreaks, but these same surveillance systems can be used in discriminatory ways. Is some sort of resolution or detente possible? This article investigates the role of the World Health Organization in implementing these potentially competing imperatives contained within the International Health Regulations (2005). To understand this relationship, it examines how the World Health Organization would implement the International Health Regulations in case of an international zombie outbreak.

Keywords:

• zombies
• biosurveillance
• human rights
• International Health Regulations

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Stephanie Carvin, Dan Drezner, Charli Carpenter, and Robert Farley for expanding my knowledge of zombies and Sara Davies, Adam Kamradt-Scott, Simon Rushton, Frank Smith, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and critiques of this article.

Notes

1 Daniel W. Drezner, Theories of International Politics and Zombies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 4.

2 World Health Organization, ‘Revision of the International Health Regulations (2005)’, Fifty-Eighth World Health Assembly, Geneva, Switzerland. Document WHA 58.3, http://www.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA58/A58_4-en.pdf (accessed July 8, 2011).

3 Wade Davis, Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).

4 Wade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic (New York: Touchstone, 1997).

5 Philip Munz et al., ‘When Zombies Attack! Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of a Zombie Infection’, Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress, ed. J. M. Tchuenche and C. Chikaya (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2009), 136.

6 Drezner, Theories of International Politics and Zombies, 4–5.

7 University of Florida, ‘Zombie Attack: Disaster Preparedness Simulation Exercise #5 (DR5)’, http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~jybarra/zombieplan.pdf (accessed July 26, 2011); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ‘Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse’, http://www.bt.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp (accessed July 26, 2011).

8 Munz et al., ‘When Zombies Attack!’, 136.

9 For examples of zombie transmission via bites, see 28 Days Later. Directed by Danny Boyle. DNA Films/British Film Council, 2002; Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (New York: Crown, 2006); Dawn of the Dead. Directed by Zach Snyder. Strike Entertainment, 2004; and Shaun of the Dead. Directed by Edgar Wright. StudioCanal, 2004. See also Jen Webb and Sam Byrnand, ‘Some Kind of Virus: The Zombie as Body and as Trope’, Body and Society 14, no. 2 (2008): 84.

10 28 Days Later; Dead Rising. Produced by Keiji Inafune, developed by Capcom, 2006.

11 Night of the Living Dead. Directed by George A. Romero. Image Ten, 1968.

12 Dawn of the Dead; Shaun of the Dead.

13 Theories for SARS’ emergence have linked the disease to bats, civets, and even extraterrestrial bacteria. See Stefan Lovgren, ‘Far-out Theory Ties SARS Origins to Comet’, National Geographic News, June 3, 2003, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0603_030603_sarsspace.html (accessed July 26, 2011).

14 One notable exception is Shaun of the Dead, in which zombies come to play an important role in society by performing manual labor and competing on game shows.

15 Zombieland. Directed by Ruben Fleischer. Relativity Media, 2009.

16 Munz et al., ‘When Zombies Attack!’, 146.

17 Michael Osterholm, ‘Preparing for the Next Pandemic’, Foreign Affairs 84, no. 4 (2005): 24–37.

18 Cited in Eric Quiñones, ‘Project Aims to “Kindle Debate” on U.S. National Security’, Princeton Weekly Bulletin, October 16, 2006, http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S16/10/08A65/index.xml (accessed July 26, 2011).

19 David P. Fidler and Lawrence O. Gostin, ‘The New International Health Regulations: An Historic Development for International Law and Public Health’, Journal of Medicine, Law, and Ethics 34, no. 1 (2006): 86–7.

20 Jessica L. Sturtevant, Aranka Anema, and John S. Brownstein, ‘The New International Health Regulations: Considerations for Global Public Health Surveillance’, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness 1, no. 2 (2007): 118.

21 World Health Organization, International Health Regulations (2005), 2nd ed. (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2005).

22 Michael G. Baker and David P. Fidler, ‘Global Public Health Surveillance under New International Health Regulations’, Emerging Infectious Diseases 12, no. 7 (2006): 1059.

23 Kumanan Wilson et al., ‘Strategies for Implementing the New International Health Regulations in Federal Countries’, Bulletin of the World Health Organization 86, no. 3 (2008): 216.

24 Eric Mack, ‘The World Health Organization's New International Health Regulations: Incursion on State Sovereignty and Ill - Fated Response to Global Health Issues’, Chicago Journal of International Law 7, no. 1 (2005): 373; Guenael Rodier et al., ‘Global Public Health Security’, Emerging Infectious Diseases 13, no. 10 (2007): 1449.

25 Lawrence O. Gostin, ‘International Infectious Disease Law: Revision of the World Health Organization's International Health Regulations', Journal of American Medical Association 291, no. 21 (2004): 2626.

26 Bruce Jay Plotkin and Ann Marie Kimball, ‘Designing an International Policy and Legal framework for the Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases: First Steps’, Emerging Infectious Diseases 3, no. 1 (1997): 3–4.

27 Philippe Calain, ‘Exploring the International Arena of Global Public Health Surveillance’, Health Policy and Planning 22, no. 1 (2007): 4.

28 Plotkin introduces a further complication, noting that ‘traveler’ itself is an ambiguous term without a precise definition. See Bruce Jay Plotkin, ‘Human Rights and other Provisions in the Revised International Health Regulations (2005)’, Public Health 121, no. 11 (2007): 844.

29 Jack Donnelly, International Human Rights (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2006), 11–16.

30 Plotkin, ‘Human Rights and other Provisions’, 844.

31 Guénaël R. Rodier, ‘New Rules on International Public Health Security’, Bulletin of the World Health Organization 85, no. 6 (2007): 428.

32 Erin M. Page, ‘Balancing Individual Rights and Public Safety during Quarantine: The US and Canada’, Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 38, no. 3–4 (2006/2007): 524–5.

33 Page, ‘Balancing Individual Rights’, 536.

34 World Health Organization, Implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005): Report of the Reporting Committee on the Functioning of the International Health Regulations (2005) in Relation to Pandemic H1N1 (2009). World Health Assembly A64/10, May 5, 2011, http://www.ghd-net.org/sites/default/files/A64_10-en.pdf (accessed July 26, 2011), 82.