Respond to at least two of your classmates posts below, agreeing or respectfully disagreeing with feedback on their opinions and ideas.
Also, provide your own response to the discussion questions. Make sure to have APA in-text citations and references.
Discussion Questions:
How do you define privacy?
Do you believe privacy is a moral right? Why or why not?
Are there any cases in which public health policy justifies violating the right to privacy?
Discussion Post by Andrew Vu:
Privacy is an individuals right to be let alone and be free from being observed, bothered by other people, and from public attention (Iapp, 2022). Privacy is also a person’s right to control how his or her information is used, saved, and shared. I believe privacy is a moral right because people should have the free will to share or not share any information about themselves. If a person wants to keep something a secret, another individual should not be forcing this person to tell his/her secret. Also, if a person is told a secret and is told that it is something that should be held private, the person who is told the secret should not be able to tell others what the secret is about because that is a breach of privacy. Public health surveillance is legally authorized and widely implemented; every state requires health care providers to report certain health conditions to the local or state public health authority. Under police powers of the states, these reports are legally required regardless of patient consent or knowledge and are justified scientifically (Lee, 2012). I believe this to justifiable because if there is some type of outbreak or infectious disease, it should be notified in case there would have to be some type on quarantine and I believe this may have happened with the start of COVID. There are some grey areas that can be justifiable and I would say this is close to utilitarianism as if it benefits the majority that is should be okay even if some privacy is breached; however, I do not believe nurses should be able to gossip or talk about patient’s they are carrying for, or telling people something private a patient may have said to them unless it is something emergent that may risk someone life.
References:
Iapp. (2022). What is privacy. What is Privacy. Retrieved May 17, 2022, from https://iapp.org/about/what-is-privacy/
Lee, L. M., Heilig, C. M., & White, A. (2012). Ethical justification for conducting public health surveillance without patient consent. American journal of public health, 102(1), 3844. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2011.300297
Discussion Post by Alicia Alejos:
I would define privacy as the right to be closed and not observed by people which can include from your body, personal life, social media, and many other things. I do believe privacy is a moral right because many dangerous things can arise as a result if privacy was not a moral right. For example, if HIPAA was not in place and everyone can know about everyones medical records there can be harm done. An example being, there is a great deal of misunderstanding in our society about mental illness and those who suffer from it, if it becomes known that a person has a history of mental illness, that person could be harassed and shunned by neighbors (McFarland, 2012). Unless the individual is ok with expressing their private situations under certain circumstances it is a moral right.
Without privacy people can be harmed or debilitated if there is no restriction on the public’s access to and use of personal information, other reasons are more fundamental, touching the essence of human personhood (McFarland, 2012). I found it challenging for myself to figure out what public health policy violates the right to privacy because there are a lot of laws that protect our privacy. I do feel that medical records being shared in the medical field in general is a violation of privacy because you are being forced in some way to share your medical issues due to nurses and doctors needing this type of information to help with treatment. HIPAA may protect from patient confidentiality, but it can always get out no matter what. At the end of it all, having this sort of invasion of privacy of medical record being open for people in the medical field to read is a positive to help with the current treatment.
References
McFarland, M. (1, June 2012). Why We Care about Privacy. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/why-we-care-about-privacy/ (Links to an external site.)
