FORCES examines the critical aspects of medicine, politics, public policy and scientific research that tend to undermine cherished barriers between public and private, between the state and the individual, and between those special powers that the liberal democratic state can normally only claim only in extraordinary circumstances (crises of epidemic disease, war) and those much more limited powers that are understood as appropriate under normal conditions of life. At a time when "public health" based claims to restrict and censure citizens have become constant, we stand against the rapid expansion of authoritarian power using "health" or "public health" as a conduit for acceptability. Such expansion of power is often simply unethical, undermines the constitutional protections that we are heir to, and wastes great human and public resources and energy in unproductive endeavours.