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.
As I understand it, this was your usual failure to use blind copy (BCC) when sending a bulk email. The HIV status of people was not divulged, only the email addresses of other recipients (not sure if this included the recipient account names as well as the address). The recipients were people who had used the clinic for some services.
--- To save space, would readers please insert their own witty comment -here-
What the fuck is a graphist?
We don't need any privacy right? Unless they are terrorists they have nothing to hide.
Take out CC: in mails and only allow BCC:
I seriously hate it when my friends send a mail to me with some other people and my email address is not hand-delivered to the virus and spam-harvester infested horrors of my other friends. If ALL emails only went out by BCC this would not happen.
Mail server maintainers such as Postfix/Exim and such should band together and simply phase out CC and start treating the CC header as a BCC header. And then should begin rejecting mails with a CC with multiple email addresses in it outright. This would solve half of the world's spam problems in a few years too.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
She/He is an idiot because she/he used CC instead of BCC. Something that riles me in general.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
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.
That all the patients' details were in an address book mystifies me. I wonder if their addresses were in the same file, and what else? These things are bound to happen given the pressures and distractions of modern life. More precautions are needed where harm may result.