The need to know versus the right to know: privacy of patient medical data in an information-based society

"Whatever, in connection with my professional practice, or not in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret."(1) "Safeguards to privacy in individual health care information are imperative to preserve the health care delivery relationship and the integrity of the patient record."(2) As early as the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., Hippocrates contemplated the importance of medical information to the care and treatment of patients. His oath suggests that privacy of a patient's medical information creates the foundation upon which a patient reposes trust in his or her physician. While defining the earliest version of the physician-patient privilege, the oath does not envision the extent of modern day access to healthcare information. A patient's relationship with the modern healthcare delivery system often includes a team of physicians, nurses, and other clinical support personnel. This relationship extends beyond direct caregivers and may include healthcare administrators, payor organizations, and persons unfamiliar with a patient's identity, such as researchers and public health officials. Accessing a patient's medical information links these participants to the patient's healthcare delivery relationship. The Hippocratic Oath does not contemplate such broad access, nor does it contemplate the emerging privacy crisis resulting from the application of computer technology to medical record storage and retrieval. The combination of broad access, individual privacy rights, and computer technology requires a rethinking of measures designed to protect the realities of the modern medical information society.     

The incompetent developmentally disabled person's right of self-determination: right-to-die, sterilization and institutionalization

The developmentally disabled, specifically those mentally incompetent from birth, are entitled to a full panoply of constitutional rights and protections. These rights include the right to terminate life-sustaining treatment, the right of procreative integrity and the right not to be involuntarily institutionalized. However, the mentally incompetent developmentally disabled are generally unable to exercise these rights. This Note asserts first that proper procedural safeguards are necessary to guarantee the exercise of these constitutional rights by the incompetent disabled individual. Second, the Note focuses upon how best to preserve the disabled person's autonomy. The Note subsequently rejects the substituted judgment standard as a legal fiction, and endorses the best interest test which necessarily comports with the evidence, and properly accounts for the disabled person's incompetency.     

Towards a new paradigm of the right to self-determination in the world trading system

There has been a shifting meaning of the right to self-determination, since World War Ⅱ, from territorial decolonisation into other meanings such as the right for indigenous people, minorities, ethnics groups and women＇s rights in the territories of independent states. Furthermore, the new phenomenon signifies that it is also used implicitly in the world trading system by states in maintaining their sovereignty from trade liberalization. This has been a dilemma in understanding the right to self-determination within international law. This paper, however, critically evaluates the potential applicability of the right to self-determination in the world trading architecture. It begins by examining the origins, evolution and current struggle to the right to self-determination in the world trading system. It then addresses in General Exceptions, Safeguard Measures and Special and Preferential Treatment as existing and applied principles in the World Trade Organization. It is highlighted that the real world still needs the right to self-determination as a means of struggling for economic justice. The right to self-determination has shifted from the right to transfer territory politically into the right to the transfer of welfare economically and in particular, the right to self-determination of people into the fight to self-determination of states.     

行政知情权的必要性及其价值的法理解析

行政知情权作为其他公民权利的前提性权利,是人民主权、控权理念与制度的内在逻辑,也是当今信息社会保障信息自由进而实现权力与权利均衡的必然要求。明确行政知情权的必要性与价值,加快相关立法,对于推进我国的民主、法治和宪政进程具有重大意义。