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Professor David Orentlicher spoke with reporters from Bloomberg News regarding the quarantine of nurse Kaci Hickox, who returned from Sierra Leone October 24 after treating patients suffering from Ebola. A forehead scan measured her temperature at 101, which Hickox attributed to her being upset at not being allowed to go on her way. A later check of her temperature with an oral thermometer registered normal.

Hickox was ultimately allowed to return to her home in Maine, which has a policy similar to the ones in New Jersey and New York. Those states had instituted a policy dictating that anyone who had traveled to Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone to remain quarantined in their home for 21 days, regardless of whether they showed symptoms of the disease.

“You can’t just do it willy-nilly, you have to have substantial justification,” Professor Orentlicher said of the quarantine policies. “What we’re seeing here, when you have a scary disease, is a tendency for people to overreact. That’s why it’s important to be guided by public health understanding.”

Professor Orentlicher is Samuel R. Rosen Professor at IU McKinney. A scholar of constitutional law, and co-director of the Hall Center for Law and Health, he also has taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago Law School. He earned degrees in law and medicine at Harvard and specializes as well in health care law and ethics.