New York To Track Diabetics
Tuesday, July 26th, 2005Another example of how far an unbridled government can creep into your private affairs:
At least half a million New Yorkers have diabetes, many of them at risk for blindness, kidney failure, amputations and heart problems because they are doing a poor job of controlling their illness. The question is, how much privacy are they willing to give up for a chance at better health?
A century after New York became the first American city to track people with infectious diseases as a way to halt epidemics, officials here propose a similar system to monitor people with diabetes, a non-contagious foe.
Conceived after a sharp rise in diabetes deaths over the past 20 years, the plan would require medical labs to report to the city the results of a certain type of test that indicates how well individual patients are controlling their diabetes.
“There will be some people who will say, ‘What business of the government is it to know that my diabetes is not in control?’” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner.
The answer, he said, is that diabetes costs an estimated $5 billion a year to treat in New York and was the fourth leading cause of death in the city in 2003, killing 1,891.
By pinpointing problem patients, then intervening ever so slightly in their care, Frieden said the city can improve thousands of lives. “I don’t think we can afford not to do anything,” he said.
As my mother used to observe, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” What this doctor fails to realize is that without a way to impose the government’s will upon the diabetic, simply monitoring their condition does no good. What good does it do to know that John Q. Public’s glucose readings are too high if you have no way of correcting the situation?
Why shouldn’t diabetics be monitored? Later in the article someone nails it:
The list of illnesses reported to public health authorities has grown over the years, but it still is almost entirely contagious diseases, like HIV, or conditions related to environmental toxins, like lead poisoning.
Diabetes is different, threatening no one but the people who have it.
“This isn’t smallpox,” said James Pyles, an attorney who represents health care groups concerned with medical privacy. “The state, or the city in this case, does not have a compelling interest in the health of an individual that overrides that individual’s right to privacy.”
Pyles praised the intent of the program, but said unless diabetics are asked for their consent, it would be “an outright violation of the constitutional right to privacy” for the government to obtain their identities.
That’s right, at first authorities would not even ask a diabetic for their confidential health information, they would simply take it without even telling the diabetic beforehand. They would allow the diabetic to opt out at a later date. No details are given about what would happen to the information already collected on a diabetic who opted out. Would it be erased from the database? Would it be stored in an archive? What would happen to data stored on backup media?
Diabetes is a danger to people everywhere, especially Type 2 diabetes, which is quickly striking millions of people in America. However, having diabetes does not give the government the right to subvert a diabetic’s privacy rights. A program such as this one, which has no viable way to enforce its provisions and allows the government access to your private medical records without consent is ill-advised, and should be scrapped immediately.
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