Cuba: The Moral Ambiguity of Preemption

Obviously, on principle and in hindsight the Cuban government’s decision to quarantine those citizens who tested positive for HIV was terribly unfortunate and undoubtedly caused enormous hardship. However, I feel as if it is not cut-and-dry enough to easily determine whether or not it was a flagrant violation of human rights.

For one, according to that report it did occur at a time when very little was known about HIV except that it was a deadly virus. Therefore the government’s reaction was not completely inappropriate. On the other hand, it could certainly be argued that it is simply unconscionable to preemptively isolate a group of people, stripping them of their rights, without sufficient evidence to support such a drastic measure. Where then does a government or a society draw the line? At what point do you decide that an individual’s rights should be ignored in order to protect the society as a whole?

Of course this decision is made easier when you are fully aware of the communicability of the disease and/or the consequences of your action or inaction. I feel it would be completely justified to quarantine a small group of people if the disease they carried had the potential to wipe out thousands or hundreds of thousands of others if unleashed upon the population. However, the problem is with this policy of preemption.

We have seen this ethical and moral ambiguity in other areas of society as well. Was it right to have attacked Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction without solid evidence that they had them? Was it right to intern the Japanese during World War II on the chance that they would leak government secrets? So was it right for the Cuban government to quarantine HIV infected citizens without knowing if they were seriously contagious? In retrospect these three are certainly examples of horrible violations of human rights, but what if things had turned out differently? What if Iraq did have WMDs that it intended to use? How many would change their view if it had turned out that HIV was wildly contagious and could be spread through the air? I think then the decision to quarantine would have been completely justified and perhaps even lauded for possibly saving countless lives.