We've all pretty much agreed that our lives are no longer private. Supreme Court Justice Scalia recently offered his personal opinion that privacy is not a right under the Constitution.
So, it must be true because our lives (some of us more than others) are impacted every single day.
Celebrities have known such well, since becoming celebrities, where one snapshot can add $10,000 plus dollars to the 10,000 words a compromising photograph can fetch.
Or information wished to be kept private.
Farrah Fawcett suspected the leaking of her medical information to the press. Along with her physician, she set up her own unique sting.
As reported by the LA Times:
As time went on and more stories appeared, Fawcett said she grew convinced that information about her medical condition was being leaked by someone at UCLA. Whenever she sought treatment there, word always got out. Even when the tabloid reports were false, she said, they were based on a morsel of truth.
When she went in for an eye exam, for instance, "they had to say I was going blind." When she had a pap smear, "they had to say that the cancer had spread; I was having a hysterectomy.
"I actually kept saying for months and months and months, 'This is coming from [UCLA]," Fawcett said. "I was never more sure of anything in my life."
Fawcett said she realized that she needed to prove her theory. So when she found out that her cancer had returned in May 2007, she deliberately withheld the news from nearly all of her relatives and friends.
"I set it up with the doctor," she said. "I said, 'OK, you know and I know.' . . . I knew that if it came out, it was coming from UCLA."
Within days of her diagnosis, the news was in the Enquirer. "I couldn't believe how fast it came out," Fawcett said. "Maybe four days."
UCLA began an investigation and quickly found that one employee had accessed her records more often than her own doctors. Fawcett said she asked for the employee's name, but the senior UCLA official in charge of patient privacy refused, saying, "We have a responsibility to protect our employees."
"And I said, 'More than your patients?' . . ." Fawcett recalled.
(...)
After months of requests, UCLA ultimately provided Fawcett's lawyers with the name of the administrative specialist who had gone through her records. In July 2007, as the hospital moved to fire the worker, Lawanda Jackson, she quit. Federal prosecutors tracked the leaks to Jackson as well.
Jackson pleaded guilty in December to a felony charge of violating federal medical privacy laws for commercial purposes but died in March of cancer before she could be sentenced. Prosecutors alleged that beginning in 2006, the Enquirer gave her checks totaling at least $4,600 in her husband's name.
Fawcett said she decided to speak up about the ordeal because she wants to see the Enquirer charged criminally for inducing UCLA workers to invade her records. "They obviously know it's like buying stolen goods," she said. "They've committed a crime. They've paid her money."
The U.S. Attorney's Office said its investigation was ongoing.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently "...signed into law tougher penalties for institutions and individuals that violate patients' privacy."
Farrah's Story--a documentary detailing her fight against cancer and her fight for privacy--is scheduled to air this Friday, May 15 on NBC. Her health condition has deterioriated since the August interviews/
"I'm a private person," she said in the interview. "I'm shy about people knowing things. And I'm really shy about my medical [care]. It would be good if I could just go and heal and then when I decided to go out, it would be OK.
"It seems that there are areas that should be off-limits."
Is that so much to ask?
(Our thoughts are with Farrah and her family during this time. And thank you for your part in the fight for common decency....)
