Hastings Cent Rep. 2016 May;46(3):7-8. doi: 10.1002/hast.584.
Nurse Kaci Hickox is among the "Ebola Fighters" honored by Time magazine as its 2014 Person of the Year, having treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone while volunteering with Médecins Sans Frontieres. When she returned to the United States in October 2014, she was quarantined in New Jersey for three days before returning home to Maine under the terms of a negotiated release. A year later, in October 2015, Hickox filed suit in federal court against Governor Chris Christie and New Jersey health officials, claiming that the quarantine violated her civil rights. Her complaint asserts that New Jersey officials lacked the authority to quarantine her because she did not pose a significant risk of transmission. The lawsuit raises important questions about disease-transmission risk, the inability of science to rule out certain theoretical risks, and the state's power to quarantine. It also demonstrates that population health depends on respecting individual liberty and using the best available epidemiological data to set public health policy.
护士 Kaci Hickox 是《时代》杂志 2014 年度人物之一，她在无国界医生组织的志愿工作中在塞拉利昂治疗埃博拉患者。2014 年 10 月，她回到美国后，在新泽西州被隔离了三天，然后根据协商释放的条款返回缅因州的家中。一年后，即 2015 年 10 月，希科克斯向联邦法院对克里斯·克里斯蒂州长和新泽西州卫生官员提起诉讼，声称隔离侵犯了她的公民权利。她的诉状称，新泽西州官员没有权力隔离她，因为她没有构成重大传播风险。该诉讼提出了关于疾病传播风险、科学无法排除某些理论风险以及州政府隔离权力的重要问题。它还表明，人口健康取决于尊重个人自由，并利用最佳的现有流行病学数据制定公共卫生政策。
