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Health Care & Hospital Law,
Civil Rights

Dec. 24, 2009

The Right to Be Healthy

The right to be healthy belongs in the Bill of Rights.

Bruce G. Fagel

Law Offices of Bruce G. Fagel & Associates

Phone: (310) 516-9035

Email: brucefagel@fagellaw.com

Whittier College School of Law

Bruce G. Fagel is licensed to practice medicine and is founder of the Law Offices of Bruce G. Fagel & Associates. He served as a consultant on medical malpractice law to the California Judicial Counsel Committee, which wrote the new CACI jury instructions. He can be reached at brucefagel@fagellaw.com

It is unfortunate that for all of the brilliance and foresight of our founding fathers, the lack of scientific knowledge about the human body in the late 18th century was such that the Bill of Rights does not contain a right to be healthy. The right of free speech and the right of protection from unreasonable search and seizure grew out of justified concerns at the time that people needed protection from an over-bearing government. The right that property could not be seized without reason...

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