It’s for your own good
Via an anonymous commenter, comes this:
Earlier this year in New York City, a public-heath regulation went into effect that set a new and very troublesome precedent, one that insinuates government agencies into personal medical matters.
In mid-January, the city began legally requiring laboratories that do medical testing to report to the Health Department the results of blood-sugar tests for city residents with diabetes — along with the names, ages, and contact information on those patients.
City officials are not only analyzing these data to assess patterns and changes in diabetes prevalence in the city, but are planning “interventions.” Simply put, diabetics will soon receive letters and phone calls from city officials offering advice and counsel on how to effectively deal with their medical condition. If you wish to keep your medical data confidential, you cannot.
Unbelievable. The nanny state marches on.
May 6th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Yikes.
May 7th, 2006 at 1:30 am
Pfft. Let’s be clear. This has nothing to do with “nannying”.
This has everything to do with mitigating risk. You think they give a fuck what happens to the people with diabetes? Not likely.
May 7th, 2006 at 8:43 am
Nannying for mitigating risk is still nannying.
May 7th, 2006 at 9:52 am
Next up – deforestatoin prevention through government tracking and reporting on “squares used per wipe” for all citizens. Naturally, government officials and law enforcement personnel will be exempt from this “common sense” measure.
May 7th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Bruce…squares used by wipe is not the real problem. One person may wipe once..other people may wipe several times. And some people go to the bathroom many times while others limit themselves to once. And why do people go more often than others? Probably has something to do with their diet. Mexican and Indian food..lots more times that you need to go. Chinese and Japanese food..less times that you need to go.
So do these people think that a persons doctor might have some role to play?
May 7th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
That depends on whose risk the gummit is trying to mitigate. If it’s trying to mitigate YOUR risk, for your own supposed good, that’s nannying. If it’s trying to boss you around to mitigate someone else’s risk, e.g., its own, that’s a dickish thing to do, but it isn’t nannying.
May 8th, 2006 at 6:10 am
I’m trying to figure out just how the city government considers that data to be any of its fucking business.
(PS: Frikken’ spam filter. *grumble*)