One patient’s “attorney had complained to the Hospital about the treatment that he had received.” As I describe elsewhere in this thread, some of the patients ended up trying to sue the Sobells. So, no, the patients were not happy with the treatment they received.
The subjects had no problem being contacted for follow-up: “the patients contacted prior to the court injunction all expressed a willingness to cooperate and to be interviewed”
Indeed, a judge familiar with the medical privacy laws of that era (we’re talking the mid-to-late 1970s here) made a court decision that contacting the patients for follow-up was perfectly OK: “Judge Hauk concluded that on balance it was more important to determine how the patients were faring following treatment than any possible breach of confidentiality and invasion of privacy which were protected by their right to refuse to participate in the study.”
I don't really like where the EU privacy laws are going. I want "try to be reasonable" option. If they are not I can always tell them to delete my contacts later.
Edit: What no-one has said here is whether the initial study did say that, and the original researchers were going against the wishes of the participants. Given how the researchers behaved that doesn't seem entirely unlikely.