[jerf]

"Even freeing up anonymized patient data seems to be met with opposition."

Unfortunately, statistically, "anonymous patient data" is an oxymoron. Any useful amount of patient data contain enough information to deanonymize it to a great extent, and in conjunction with other data often fully deanonymize.

http://33bits.org/2010/06/21/myths-and-fallacies-of-personal...

[Symmetry]

Quite true, but that does take effort. Whatever we do we're going to have to make a tradeoff between saving lives and preserving privacy at some point.