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by ben_w
615 days ago
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Two people being treated unequally doesn't tell you who was being treated unfairly. In her case, if there were indeed comparable cases of people repeatedly refusing to follow medical isolation, it's the others who were unfairly given freedom to continue to infect and kill innocent people. |
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I only form my opinion from the current Wikipedia article, and this is how it looks to me.
- Mary Mallon, herself, was just as innocent, yet she was treated as a criminal, which is unfair.
- Her treatment was "hectic" as per Wikipedia. I'd say it was unreasonable and dangerous, with a big pile of negligence.
- Communication and information given to her was inconsistent at best.
- She had all the rights and reasons to disbelieve and dispute all conjectures made about her. Contemporary state-of-the-art knowledge and practices in medicine and "public health" was nowhere near conclusive and confident. She had a good shot at collecting evidence to prove her case, but to my understanding she was denied a fair judgement - case was dismissed before hearing. However, I believe that her continuous isolation could not be justified "beyond reasonable doubt" even by our modern knowledge and standard of proof!
- The demands put on her were unreasonable and excessive.
- He name was dragged through media, forever tainted in the process.
- She was never given appropriate consideration/compensation for all the conditions of her treatment and limitations of release. They could have offered her a lifetime pension which would have removed the need for her to work as a cook. They could have recruited her for research program, compensated accordingly. Instead, she was expected to bear full cost of all conditions put on her. The best shot at compensation was a promise of royalties for yet-unwritten book dragging her name through more mud. Which only added insult to injury, understandably, as it would absolutely do for so many of us.
- My understanding is that other similar cases were not "refused requests to isolate", but such requests were not even made, making Mary's case unfairly singled out.
- Last but not least, I absolutely disagree with your chosen turn of phrase that others were "unfairly given freedom". Freedom is not given, it is a default state of being. To take it away requires extraordinary justification, which in Mary's case was awfully deficient and remains so to this day.