We deserve as much transparency as we can get on the science we as taxpayers paid for, not full de-anonymization of the bodily happenings of living crew. There's certainly valuable science here, but the crew member doesn't have to be outed for it.
> You don't get to go to space on other people's money and expect privacy.
I don't think this is a healthy mindset, and there's a heck of a slippery slope with this argument. Would we apply this to companies receiving federal grants too? Contractors? Universities? Schools? That's a lot of people who'll lose medical privacy for something probably unrelated to their job, and there'll be a much smaller applicant pool for the jobs themselves if applicants are aware that their own internal issues might be disclosed when the public clamors for it.
> We might want to learn from what went wrong here.
Agree, NASA certainly will, and new science and engineering will come of it that we benefit from. But that doesn't have to involve breaching medical privacy and ethics.
You want Medicaid? Tell everyone about your hemorrhoids first.
I think there's value in reducing stigma around health conditions, but forcing poor people to reveal their medical conditions to the world isn't it.
The benefit only accrues if the sharing is universal.
I am too private a person to agree with GP, but it does seem that most health issues that are visible to the passerby or casual acquaintence are less stigmatized than the ones that can be hidden. There might be something to the idea.
Of course you'd have to agree that de-stigmatizing is more socially important than privacy. I guess I'm privileged enough to have no stigmas, secret or otherwise, that I consider more important than my privacy. But I know others are less fortunate.
The GP's statement wasn't for universal sharing. It was to force recipients of taxpayer money to share their medical records.
It's a gross demand: Force poor and old people to reveal their medical conditions to the world.
While I am still confident of that assessment, I'll grant you that "obvious" charitable interpretation is not as reliable as it should be. :-/
Whatever it is, I am aware that my lack of concern here is something which makes me different from normal people. I don't really get why people in general are ashamed of their medical histories, but I nevertheless absolutely do support everyone's right to keep such secrets, because there's a few specific cases where the medical history reveals something socially damaging either in the present or with a risk of it becoming so in the future, the obvious example of which is an abortion given the US seems to be facing a loss of freedom in this regard.
(Perhaps most people have something socially damaging in their medical histories, and I've just not noticed because nobody says the thing?)
None of those I'd want shared anywhere, to anyone, against my will. Those (overall) are not rare.
You might not have anything to hide now, but you might in the future. Someone you are closest to gets murdered or into a horrific violent accident right in front of you. Despite your best efforts this gives you crippling PTSD and you are committed involuntarily for a 72 hour hold. Now your future employer (legally or not) runs a quick records check and sees you have mental health concerns and really doesn't care about the context. Why roll the dice? Go with the candidate who was in a close 2nd and already a coin flip who doesn't have such a thing in their history.
Plenty of other scenarios that can happen to anyone even if they live the most perfect boring life imaginable and never do anything interesting ever. Plenty more for folks who step off the reservation of "acceptable social/corporate behavior" even a little bit.
Plus, if you want to protect folks like in your example of having an abortion on their record - you need to vehemently defend their right as a boring person yourself as that's the only way such individuals will ever be protected. It's like herd immunity but for privacy.
It's not about the people who have nothing to hide. It's about the people who do.
These are human beings and employees not Big Brother contestants.
> You don't get to go to space on other people's money and expect privacy.
Yes, everyone gets privacy. You don’t get to see their private communications back home. You don’t get their medical records.
They aren’t receiving money from taxpayers like a gift. They’re doing a job. It’s ridiculous to demand that they forfeit their privacy because tax money was involved.
> We might want to learn from what went wrong here.
NASA will learn what went wrong here because they’re in a position to act on
You are not in a position to do anything about it. Violating their privacy would make no difference.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19770023791 ("The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: Medical report" (1977))
Speculating:
If this is a condition of employment as an astronaut, then it probably wouldn't include conditions confirmed not to be caused by being in space, which means this'll stay confidential until NASA has fully diagnosed the crew member and figured out what likely happened.
And if it turns out the crew member's issue was entirely unrelated to the mission, it stays under wraps but new science or procedures are devised to better manage this and related conditions in space.
It does cost a lot of money to keep their jobs going, but: They're not slaves. We do not own these people.
The relevant people that can do the research and write future policies based on the data obviously will have the information. Not sure what good you think that you personally having it can do.
Therefore it's not relevant and not needed for the public to know.
The specifics of “who” has zero relevance to what is necessary for an ongoing situation; you don’t get to dictate your access and timeline to information just because you contributed a fraction of a penny to something.
Why? There are different rules for different endeavors, specializations, and roles. NASA is ostensibly for exploration, in an expansive sense. Hiding information of any kind, seems antithetical to the over-arching mission.
> The relevant people that can do the research and write future policies based on the data obviously will have the information.
Given recent events, this assumption of fidelity is not something I can subscribe to, for the rest of my days.
Government employees, contractors, etc. don't owe your curiousity satiety. We are buying their service, not their soul.
If it is policy to overshare medical details, that might lead astronauts to delay or refuse to give medical information that does matter to the mission. Before we talk at all of medical ethics, on purely pragmatic grounds this information ought to be confidential.
As a hypothetical example, it’s possible to disclose if this health issue was known before they were selected for the mission, and if it was, what processes were in place to determine if they should or should not go, etc, all without revealing personal health information.
I wouldn't ask for a full health report to be made public by law. Maybe a summary for elected officials.
That is the transparency in action.
I'm sure NASA is keeping good records and will take lessons learned from this situation, but they can do that without blasting someone's private medical information out publicly.
Nope. On a previous mission one of the crew members had to sped a night in hospital after touchdown. They never said who, or what for. This is standard procedure, and for good reason.