When Public Health Overrides Private Healing: Ethical Dilemmas in Pandemic-Era Isolation and the Right to Treatment

This paper examines the ethical and constitutional limits of public health authority when infection control measures restrict access to essential medical treatment during infectious disease crises. Drawing on legal and bioethical scholarship and the case of MERS patient #80 in South Korea, we assess whether the prolonged isolation that suspended life-sustaining cancer therapy met standards of scientific justification and proportionality. The case underscores a key distinction between measures aimed at preventing transmission and measures that result in the denial of treatment for serious, unrelated conditions. Using the Siracusa Principles and the requirement of least restrictive means as a normative framework, we argue that restrictions on liberty must be lawful, necessary, and grounded in clear evidence of public health benefit. We also invoke H. L. A. Hart’s principle of fairness as a complementary lens for evaluating how the burdens of public health measures are distributed. Although individuals may have a moral duty to comply with infection control policies, such a duty presupposes that no group bears disproportionate, avoidable harm. We conclude that, even during public health emergencies, suspending non-deferrable, life-preserving treatment demands especially strong justification. Ethical and constitutional legitimacy depends not only on effective disease control but also on safeguarding access to essential medical care.