Like tiny insects in the palm of history
Patricia Hewitt’s got a little list…
At the beginning of November we had this:
Millions of personal medical records are to be uploaded regardless of patients’ wishes to a central national database from where information can be made available to police and security services, the Guardian has learned.
Details of mental illnesses, abortions, pregnancy, HIV status, drug-taking, or alcoholism may also be included, and there are no laws to prevent DNA profiles being added. The uploading is planned under Whitehall’s bedevilled £12bn scheme to computerise the health service.
Now, (via the excellent Philip), at the beginning of December, we have this:
Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, said letters from patients who want to keep their private medical details out of the government’s reach should be sent to Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, for “full consideration”.
‘Full consideration’. The Secretary of Health would like to give you her full consideration. Sod the privacy of patients frightened of what an authoritarian government, that has been shown time and time again to be darkly mendacious and comedically incompetent, might be capable of. Patricia wants to know who you are.
Just what that ‘consideration’ will involve other than creating another little database, this time of dissidents, and then tossing the letters in the trash, isn’t clear. The Government’s response seems to be a polite ‘get stuffed‘:
The department’s response to people [...] explains that it will not agree to their request to stop the process of adding their information to the new NHS database. The department does not believe that processing their information in this way is a genuine reason linked to substantial and unwarranted distress.
This form letter (pdf) sent out to all those good enough to submit their misgvings, along with their names and addresses, to the authorities is full of warm reassurance:
While a few doctors have said that the Spine could have been designed in a different way, the majority – including some of the most senior and respected doctors in the country – are supportive and believe that it will improve delivery of healthcare to patients.
There are those who disagree. You have to wonder how much of a comfort that is to Helen Wilkinson who…
…was mistakenly labelled an alcoholic after a simple computer error by the NHS. An unknown official at a hospital was updating her medical records and inputted a wrong code. The mix-up meant she was recorded as having received treatment for alcoholism, instead of surgery.
Wouldn’t you call that ’substantial and unwarranted distress’? And how about this:
She was also angry that the records had been shared with a private company which distributes personal medical records to academic researchers [...] In 2003 she was contacted by researchers a week before she was due to have an operation.
The thing is, and it can’t be pointed out enough, the people forcing this on us are the last people who are going to have to rely on it. Are you seriously telling me that Gordon Brown’s son will have nothing but the finest care for his cystic fibrosis? That he’ll suffer the vagaries of the system as pointed out by the Cystic Fibrosis Trust? (Word document). Tony Blair was lucky enough to get the catheter ablation he needed to sort his dodgy ticker. Others haven’t been as fortunate.
Is it any wonder that people refuse to sign OurPetition, the petition asking ‘elected representatives of all UK political parties voluntarily refrain from self-paid or insurance-paid medical care treatment’. The former Tory leader Michael Howard was just the latest:
I cannot sign your petition for a number of reasons. First, the number of letters I receive from my constituents suggests that very many people have to use private healthcare not through the desire to jump the queue and the system, but because it is necessary for their own health. Such is the state of NHS dentistry, for example, that many people have no option but to use the private sector.
It looks, once again, that we’ll have to put our faith in governmental incompetence and hope the system never sees the light of day in full ‘working’ order. That you have to hope your government is as stupid as you suspect it is in order to secure peace of mind just shows how low we’ve come.
Posted on December 3rd, 2006 at 12:33pm under Affronts to democracy, New Labour, Science and progress, UK politics
| Related posts... • Guardian: Patients win right to keep records off NHS computer • Guardian: Warning over privacy of 50m patient files • Soaking up the leaks |
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