Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-18-2007
Abstract
“Illness has recently emerged from the obscurity of medical treatises and private diaries to acquire something like celebrity status,” Professor David Morris astutely observes. Great plagues and epidemics throughout history have won notoriety as collective disasters; and the Western world has made curiosities of an occasional “Elephant Man,” “Wild Boy,” or pair of enterprising “Siamese Twins.” People now reveal their illnesses and medical procedures in conversation, at work and on the internet. This paper explores the reasons why, despite the celebrity of disease and a new openness about health problems, privacy and confidentiality are still values in medicine.
Keywords
medical privacy, journalism, right to control health data disclosures, right to choose solitude or seclusion
Publication Title
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
Repository Citation
Allen, Anita L., "Face to Face with “It”: And Other Neglected Contexts of Health Privacy" (2007). All Faculty Scholarship. 175.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/175
Included in
Communications Law Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Health Law and Policy Commons, Law and Society Commons, Medical Jurisprudence Commons, Medicine and Health Commons, Privacy Law Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons
Publication Citation
151:3 Proc. Am. Phil. Soc'y 300 (Sept. 2007).