My TEDMED Talk on Medical Data Privacy
Last November, I gave a talk at the TEDMED Conference on health and medical data privacy. The talk is online.
Comments
Uninformed • February 24, 2017 2:28 PM
http://tedmed.com/speakers/show?id=627300
Konqueror 4.14.25, KDE Platform 4.14.29, Fedora 25. The talk doesn’t seem to be available for listening or download.
Who controls my health data? Public court records of unavenged mockery and slander of my character and mental health. Huge mental health red flag on the National Instant Criminal Background Check system. Cops harass me all the time asking me if I need to see the doctor or if I need to be on some kind of medication.
“[L]egally adjudicated as a mental defective” per Obama’s executive order on Social Security benefit recipients under 18 U.S. Code 922 (d)(4), (g)(4). At least that executive order was slapped down by Congress, but because we’re so deep in the red-light district, we have to note that any prosecutor will allege that the adjudication “has” taken place (according to the language of those paragraphs) depite its reversal by an act of Congress, leaving me still allegedly in the category of prohibited persons.
The only avenue for redress was sneakily de-funded by an amendment to some omnibus bill passed Congress many years ago, and when when Congress did restore funding for that purpose, namely in the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007, the Act, although it was signed into law by President Obama, was never properly codified into U.S. Code, but left as a vague annotation under that section.
Vague allegations are never enough to restore gun rights, but they are certainly enough to land anyone in prison for many years for so much as uttering the word “gun.” That is how far our criminal court system standards have fallen from proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
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Uninformed • February 24, 2017 4:04 PM
@Informed
Thank you. That link does not work in Konqueror, but it does in Chromium. I am fortunate to have a choice of browsers. Some sites work better in some browsers than others.
Now that I’m listening to the talk, I definitely agree with Bruce’s assessment of the prevalence of misuse and unethical use of medical data.
My main point of difference is that perhaps Bruce gives too much credit to doctors, but that reflects my personal experience with prejudice, hatred, and discrimination.
Informed • February 24, 2017 4:07 PM
I’ve not had a chance to listen to the talk yet, I’m going to listen later.
My experience with Doctors is that they try their best ethically but it’s the state/government who try and misuse medically privileged information. This will obviously vary from country to country.
Uninformed • February 24, 2017 8:54 PM
@Informed
My experience with Doctors is that they try their best ethically but it’s the state/government who try and misuse medically privileged information. This will obviously vary from country to country.
Secret detention and secret mental health commitment are not okay under any circumstances. Nor is it okay to leave the matter unredressed. All our privileged medical information is, of course, inevitably published internationally once it is online with NSA/Mob-crippled security.
Doctors … try their best ethically
What we really need is such a state/government crackdown on these Doctors, as never before witnessed in the history of humankind. All the world will stand in horror, judgment, and condemnation of their crimes when the evidence is heard.
Overinformed • February 24, 2017 11:01 PM
@Uninformed
Secret detention and secret mental health commitment are not okay under any circumstances.
They’re okay if the purpose is to silence someone who critiques their government. If you disagree you’re unpatriotic. Nobody who loved their country would stand against madman hijacking it.
Drone • February 25, 2017 3:36 AM
Eugenics and Progressive Marxism are connected at the hip. The very young and the very old contribute least to the “Collective”, and are therefore deprecated. Your age and your medical history (which is owned by the State) are what represent you when (unbeknownst to you) you virtually stand before the State’s “Death Panel” Algorithm – to receive your fate.
Winter • February 25, 2017 4:56 AM
@Drone
“Eugenics and Progressive Marxism are connected at the hip.”
Eugenucs have always been the Halmarks of fascists and nazis.
Ergo Sum • February 25, 2017 8:37 AM
@Uninformed…
Now that I’m listening to the talk, I definitely agree with Bruce’s assessment of the prevalence of misuse and unethical use of medical data.
Is that unethical use of the data, or there’s a business case for analyzing data? In the case of the latter one, it is not unethical, at least in the US…
Milliman IntelliScripts main purpose is:
Milliman Underwriting Intelligence begins with our market leading prescription history solutions. Milliman IntelliScript delivers complete and current prescription histories that allow insurers to make instant underwriting decisions with confidence
Source: http://www.rxhistories.com/Solutions/
How a data broker can obtain your prescription history in the world of HIPAA, HITECH, and other federal regulations is beyond me. Especially when the quoted purpose is to ensure health insurance companies’ profitability…
Uninformed • February 25, 2017 4:12 PM
@Drone, Winter
The State of Oregon was really big into eugenics and forced sterilization of so-called “mentally ill” from the 1920s on, and although that sort of thing went underground in the 1990s, it has really made a large but undocumented comeback since 9/11/2001.
- https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/OR/OR.html
- https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/oregon-state-board-eugenics
- http://oregonquarterly.com/dark-response-to-our-fecund-mental-derelicts
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1170108/
- https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/handle/1957/8301
- https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/oregon_anti-sterilization_league/
M B Walker • February 25, 2017 6:04 PM
@uninformed
Oregon wasn’t the only state. Both North Carolina and Virginia practiced forced sterilization up until about the 60’s.
What evidence do you have that the practice has made a comeback?
Uninformed • February 25, 2017 7:49 PM
@ M B Walker
Oregon wasn’t the only state.
Not by any means. I wasn’t even suggesting that.
Both North Carolina and Virginia practiced forced sterilization up until about the 60’s.
Officially, it may have stopped then, but I seriously doubt such practices don’t continue unofficially.
What evidence do you have that the practice has made a comeback?
I don’t believe that practice ever really went away.
- There has been a marked general increase in organized crime lately, especially in the medical field; (NOT necessarily in prosecutions or convictions.)
- Too many fertility docs are fleecing desperate couples.
- Too much Sigmund Freud: there is always a hidden or covert sexual agenda with these mental health allegations, e.g., “She’s hysterical!” or “He’s nuts!” (where “hysterical” means “of the uterus” and “nuts” refers to testicles.)
- Too much hate for LGBT. “Gender identity disorder” is still in DSM, and gays and lesbians are still treated unofficially as if homosexuality were a mental disorder.
- Cancer industry is focusing too much on women’s breasts and sexual organs of both genders such as cervix, uterus, prostate, testicles, even penis. Other tissues of the body not perceived as sexual or “private parts” do not seem prone to diagnosis of cancer at comparable rates.
Uninformed • February 25, 2017 9:00 PM
What the cancer industry is doing in the United States, the Swedes would call ett sexuellt övergrepp and the Norwegians would have a storjury over it.
venessa • February 25, 2017 9:28 PM
@Drone
Eugenics and Progressive Marxism are connected at the hip. The very young and the very old contribute least to the “Collective”, and are therefore deprecated. Your age and your medical history (which is owned by the State) are what represent you when (unbeknownst to you) you virtually stand before the State’s “Death Panel” Algorithm – to receive your fate.
eugenics is about genes and race
as for any kind of marxism, the very young are needed to replace those who expire from age, and the very old are needed because of the time it takes to learn any field deeply
@Uninformed
Cancer industry is focusing too much on women’s breasts and sexual organs of both genders such as cervix, uterus, prostate, testicles, even penis. Other tissues of the body not perceived as sexual or “private parts” do not seem prone to diagnosis of cancer at comparable rates.
testosterone and estrogen affect cancer so why shouldn’t places with more to do with them be mode affected by them?
you just hate breasts you misogynistic pig
Spanish Inquisition • February 26, 2017 10:49 AM
@ fat slob who called someone a misogynistic pig and slurred the name of a Vietnam veteran
Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Anschutz Medical Campus. What is this?
What did the oligarch Michael Bloomberg give over $1B for?
There is only one law that will gain the mastery of you doctors, and to which you must submit, obey, and bow your knees in defeat. This Law is the Law of eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, skin for skin, and life for life. The manner in which the Law is applied is this: by the time you have willfully and intentionally harmed even a single hair of the head of one of your patients, you have lost your life, and no profession has ever so richly earned, deserved, and called upon themselves wholesale capital punishment as yours has.
Front and center, docs. Where are you hiding?
vas pup • February 28, 2017 4:16 PM
@Bruce: presentation was good with suggestions how to fix status quo, but suggested solutions will touch too many financially interested parties with powerful lobby in legislatures(fed or state).
You are right about some medical issues which required trust to be disclosed. I just want to give you example out of the past medical practice in former soviet union on STD. Nobody: police officers, prosecutors, judges, communist party bosses, etc. were immune from it. Dermatologists (all on government payroll) should register all such patients, ask about their sexual contacts and conduct with the help of LEA search of those contacts to eliminate further chain infections. As result, many power folks were treated privately by those dermatologists. They pay money to keep their health problem secret – no records created/kept, no negative influence on career. Doctors could be punished, but at the end of the day ‘punisher’ knew they are not immune as well. Those doctors were very rich and respected.
aeon • March 2, 2017 2:29 PM
Haven’t watched the talk, yet. But wanted to share a quick observation on medical data security: nearly all doctors I know use their private e-mail address to communicate with colleagues and patients, for various reasons.
I have a friend working in an oncology department who told me that it’s perfectly normal to use your private cellphone to call an external contractor and ask them to send the MRT result for your current patient ASAP to a private e-mail address.
Aggregated data, however, that’s aa different story…
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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
Name (required) • February 24, 2017 2:14 PM
What organization advocates for civilizaed medical information practices?