To the Editor.—
The synopsis of forensic psychiatry in THE JOURNAL was excellent. The staff work was superior.
However, I must respond to the quote from Emmanuel Tanay, MD, where he dismisses "dangerousness" as a legal and not a psychiatric concept.
Since the beginnings of Western legal systems under kings, the state has always possessed and enforced its power to coerce the citizenry for the general health and welfare. Witness compulsory vaccination, education, and sanitation. It is not a legal concept that forces immigrants to undergo stringent physical examinations or overseas airplanes to be carefully washed and sprayed before departing for this country. The tacit and often expressed premise on which these police powers are based is the need to protect the people from "dangerous" illnesses. The recent flap over requiring all Amish people to be vaccinated is but the current illustration.
Psychiatric illness is often no less "dangerous" than
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