Slashdot Mirror
UK Health Clinic Accidentally Publishes HIV Status of 800 Patients
An anonymous reader writes: A sexual health clinic in London accidentally disclosed the HIV positive status of almost 800 patients. The Guardian reports: "The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has ordered an inquiry into how the NHS handles confidential medical information after the “completely unacceptable” breach of the privacy of hundreds of HIV patients. The 56 Dean Street clinic in London apologized on Wednesday after sending a newsletter on Tuesday which disclosed the names and email addresses of about 780 recipients. The newsletter is intended for people using its HIV and other sexual health services, and gives details of treatments and support.
What the fuck is a graphist?
We don't need any privacy right? Unless they are terrorists they have nothing to hide.
CC has legitimate uses though. For instance in business you might email someone but copy in several other people in the team. You don't want to use BCC as you want replies to go to your teammates too, and you don't want to use To so it's clear who the email was intended for.
Because people are stupid.
HIV is pretty much non-contagious as long as you don't exchange some sort of body fluid. Now, I don't know how you go about in your everyday life, but I don't routinely have people spill blood, semen or other stuff coming out of their body into mine.
But people are stupid.
Remember the H1N1 craze? Swine flu? Or any other of the sky-is-falling pandemics? SARS anyone? Yes, they are contagious. How many cases did we have around the US and Europe? Was it more than a dozen combined? People went apeshit over that crap. Mostly because they didn't have the first clue about it other than "oh it's killing people, watch out!"
And now imagine these people should interact with people who actually carry a deadly disease. No matter that there is no sensible way they could get infected, they WILL go bananas over it.
HIV is already a disease that puts a terrible weight on your psyche. Making these people outcasts for no reason whatsoever doesn't really help it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Stigma and discrimination. HIV +ve individuals are routinely denied housing, employment and ostracised from society due to their HIV status. By making a public register this would further discourage people from seeking appropriate testing and treatment.
The most common mode of transmission is through sexual intercourse and effective treatment of HIV (through the use of HAARTs) significantly reduces the chance of passing the infection on. By discouraging people from seeking out proper healthcare they will be more infectious and less likely to know their HIV status. The casual hookups of things like: grindr, sex on premises venues, beats etc... can be fairly anonymous, so a public register of HIV infected individuals is not exactly going to be the most useful thing anyway.
Disclaimer: I am an HIV epidemiologist.
This strongly implies there's some medical issue with all the recipients of this e-mail newsletter. After all, why would someone be subscribed to this who is not HIV positive or has some other affliction?
And in one sentence you've proven how personal information can lead to completely the wrong conclusions. This is why privacy is no joke and needs to be taken seriously...
Using CC or BCC as a substitute for a mailing list is a good indicator that the organisation in question has no IT skills at all and probably shouldn't be trusted with any data that you might want to be confidential and that they might want to store on a computer.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News