How do you feel about publishing the names of people with infectious diseases?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

If we are going to publish gun owners names (for the children), shouldn't parents have the right to know if their kids are coming to your house and you have an infectious disease. Only seems fair.

david

[Jamastiene]

1. They do here in my hometown.

Anyone who tests positive for HIV has their names published in the paper.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

3. Do you live in the United States?

[Jamastiene]

5. North Carolina

Rockingham. They publish the names in the Richmond County Daily Journal.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

6. Whoever gives the paper the names is in violation of federal law.

[Jamastiene]

7. I thought it was just plain wrong when they did it.

It was the Health Department here that gave the names. It was back in the 90s. I want to say between 1995 and 1997 was when I actually still read that paper. So, it was then that I saw it. It should be none of anybody else's business, you know?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

8. Before HIPAA, I thought you were saying they still do it.

[Jamastiene]

9. I don't know if they still do it, but they did for a long time there.

My aunt still reads that paper. She would mention if they published any more names, because she knows I wanted to alert some HIV group to it. We don't have a huge amount of cases of it here. It's a rural area. Still, it seemed really wrong to me.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

10. Wrong and now highly illegal.

[Jamastiene]

11. Good. n/t

[guardian]

20. That is just wrong. N/T

You'd think they would have beensued out of business...even before Federal HIPAA laws.

[rrneck]

2. Why not just

make a big X on their door in sheep's blood.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

4. Even better tattoo INFECTED on their forehead.

[rrneck]

16. But, but

everyone would be able to see it when you go out of your house. If you wanted to plant a tree in your yard or something they might call the cops.

[Starry Messenger]

18. Infected tattoos are ouchy.

[tama]

12. Is

stupidity a infectuous disease? Is control freakism based on uncontrollable fear an infectuous disease?

[yay]

13. Yes.... yes it is

Stupidity is very contagious if proper measures are not taken. Try to refrain from face palming when arguing with idiots as either the desiease itself is transmitted through the hands, or the repeated impacts on the head make the brain much more susceptible.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

17. I hope it's not, if your spelling is any indication.

[pnwmom]

14. Gun ownership is voluntary, being sick is not. n/t

[jeepnstein]

15. It's also a Constitutional Right. Second only to Speech.

[iverglas]

21. no constitutional right to be sick?

So ... if you get sick, the gu'mint can lock you up and throw away the key?

Or just publish your name. What the hell.

[one-eyed fat man]

19. they don't publish names BUT

It has been DoD policy since 1985 to test all service members annually for HIV. Anyone who tests HIV positive is not deployable. Units are notified when a soldier is not eliglble to deploy outside CONUS. For any other reason a soldier might not be deployable, sole surviving son for a combat deployment, for example, the personnel section gets a code and a reason. So when no reason is listed, the rumor mill goes into high blower.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

25. There are lots of medical reasons one might not be deployed.

A platoon sergeant of mine wasn't deployed because his dentures hadn't arrived in Germany yet.

David

[iverglas]

22. how about prescribed methadone users?

The Toronto Star site is all fucked up again today, but this is a copy of an article from two weeks ago:

http://johnb98.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/methadone-patients-demand-ethical-treatment-from-ontario-college-of-physicians-and-surgeons/
(it's quite a long article)

When 50-year-old Tracy Thacher needs her medication, she has to consume a white, crystalline powder dissolved in orange juice, under direct observation by a pharmacist. She has to submit to random urine screening and attend her doctor’s office as required, despite having taken the drug for almost fifteen years.

“All we’re asking is that we’re treated like other patients,” said Thacher at a rally Friday outside the office of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO). “We want our doctors to be able to practice using their own discretion, not rules made up by a different group of people.”

But Thacher’s a methadone patient, one of approximately 22,000 in Ontario.

... Methadone patients are also outraged over the CPSO’s practice of turning their “guidelines” into rules. This practice forces Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) patients to, among other things, disclose to the CPSO personal information, including their names and other identifying private information, as a condition of receiving methadone treatment.

But the CPSO wrote that they only collect the most basic information from MMT patients, including name, city of residence, gender, date of birth, OHIP number, treating physician and episodes in treatment in order to maintain a centralized patient and physician registry as mandated by the Agreement with the Ministry.

However, methadone patients said that maintaining a registry is illegal and further said the CPSO uses this data not simply for statistics but in research publications - without their specific and informed consent, a charge the CPSO flatly denied.

... So last October, Berger filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal and the Information and Privacy Commissioner with a request, he said, “to stop discriminating against the most motivated addicts, seeking treatment in the province.” He’s still awaiting a decision.

I know the doctor and lawyer involved in the case, long-time left-wing activists working with refugees and injured workers, among others.

And that's what happens in Canada when improper disclosures of personal information are alleged. People fight it.

Just fyi.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

24. Canada sure is a screwed up place. America has laws in place to prevent that.

[Hoopla Phil]

23. THAT is a very interesting question. One I had not considered before.