It's not as black and white as that. People also have died because of the abuse of medical data. There is real, genuine harm either way.

And I'm not saying I wouldn't be willing to share. I have consented to such things before. But it should be my decision how much risk I'm willing to shoulder.

Your desire to "help" others at the cost of social stigma for me is something I find disgusting.

People will die as a result of their medical privacy being stripped away, when they forgo care in fear of the effect that stigma has or fear of losing their job due to their medical needs being to expensive or being prosecuted from having a miscarriage or drug use, etc.

sure but to engage in the relevant consequentialist reasoning correct you need to argue that this is more people, not just some people

(I'm undecided on the whole thing but this argument as stated is bad)

Just being pregnant is enough not to get hired because employers hate maternity leave.

the amount of people who think that social stigma cant be changed is beyond me.

This is one of those cases where when we open things up we realize that just about everyone has or does things that are stigmatized and we have no choice but to stop stigmatizing them, the secrecy and shame are self-reinforcing.

> we realize that just about everyone has or does things that are stigmatized and we have no choice but to stop stigmatizing them

Yeah, it almost never actually works out that way, though.

Eventually perhaps, but is it fair to demand that everyone subjects themselves to that in the years or decades that that process takes?

You are probably like me. To me there is no medical information of any kind that could embarrass or "stigmatize" me or anyone else.

But the vast majority of people are paralyzed by fear that someone might find out they have hemorrhoids.

Others live in a delusional state of paranoia where "duh gubmint" will use the info against them not realizing that any entity, governmental or otherwise, willing to do so will just ignore privacy laws anyways.

> To me there is no medical information of any kind that could embarrass or "stigmatize" me or anyone else.

The problem isn't being embarrassed. The problem is suffering real world consequences for certain types of medical treatment, such as problems getting work, renting housing, etc.

> The problem is suffering real world consequences for certain types of medical treatment, such as problems getting work, renting housing, etc.

Fix that, then? I keep hearing about all of these nightmare scenarios, dreamed up by paranoiacs.

I submit. You are right. Fix THOSE problems instead of killing people.

I'm agreeing with you. What you said happens. We must fix that.

If things are that bad, the entities inflicting these consequences don't care about medical privacy anyways, right?

> I keep hearing about all of these nightmare scenarios, dreamed up by paranoiacs.

Not at all. These are all things that used to be pretty common. That's why medical privacy laws were enacted.

> Fix THOSE problems instead of killing people.

That would be ideal, yes. But nobody has figured out a way to do that.

BTW, I don't think your phrasing is helpful to your cause. It implies it's a black-and-white issue when in reality it's a very complex issue with a ton of nuance.

People die as a result of the lack of medical privacy too, after all.

> the entities inflicting these consequences don't care about medical privacy anyways, right?

No, they don't. But they do care about the huge fines and other legal consequences they risk by not adhering to the law.

Yeah I also wish it wasn't stigmatized for teenagers to go on birth control to control PCOS or whatever, but I sure as fuck am against some random state government putting together "research panels" or whatever of such people without their informed consent.

> I'm not willing to let tens or hundreds of thousands of people die because of social stigma

How about a comprise then? What if we made it so that you could get unrestricted medical record access for any patient for whom you are willing to to guarantee (under severe financial penalty) will not die?