[sdenton4]

I didn't say that we should give up medical privacy at all. Simply that there is, in fact, a trade off, and that the current regime looks to me both overly restrictive and poorly implemented.

Wholly getting rid of medical privacy is obviously a bad idea. But perhaps we could agree that there are research purposes where greater access to data would be helpful, and that creating exemptions under certain circumstances could help on the research side. (Eg, the data is securely silo'ed and access restricted, and stays inside the research org only.)

(It's mind boggling to me that people have such poor ability to think in anything but stark binaries. It's a total failure of critical thought which degrades the quality of policy discussion. How do we even approach it?)

[nradov]

There is no real trade off between medical privacy and research. That's a total red herring. Researchers can already ask patients for consent to use their data. Many patients will agree, especially if researchers explain the potential benefits and take responsible steps to safeguard the data.

HIPAA regulations also allow researchers to use de-identified data.

https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/special-...

[floydnoel]

I think this question boils down to individualism vs collectivism. If you think it is ok to override individual rights in order to "benefit the many" then you will be in favor of your proposal. If you view individual rights as _unalienable_ then you won’t value collective benefits over the individual rights to privacy & self-determination.

I don’t see how your particular viewpoint is any less "binary" than the other one. Collectivism or individualism is the binary option, where you land on the collectivist side of the coin.

It's mind boggling to me that people still resort to ad-hominem attacks when discussing viewpoints here on HN, when it's clearly against the rules. How do we even approach it?