Loss of Privacy

The Oklahoma law that would force the public posting of women who obtained abortions that was set to go into effect November 1, 2009 has been successfully challenged in court. For now, the law has been blocked until a February 19 hearing.

“We are very pleased with today’s ruling. This law is a profound intrusion on women’s privacy and a waste of taxpayers’ money,” attorney Jennifer Mondino of the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a written statement. The New York-based center had filed a suit on behalf of former state Rep. Wanda Jo Stapleton and another Oklahoma resident.

“Women in Oklahoma should not have to jump through hoops to access legal medical care and the government has no business violating the state constitution to impose those obstacles,” Mondino said.

The law, passed in May, requires doctors to fill out a 10-page questionnaire for every abortion performed, including asking the woman about her age, marital status, race and years of education. In all, there are 37 questions the women are to answer.

This law is misguided because the lawmakers never took into account the fact that the women obtaining abortions could be identified or misidentified by the information that would be made public. If the law stands, it would go into effect March 1, 2011 at which time all women in Oklahoma would simply drive over the border to neighboring states to obtain abortions.

Regardless of your views on abortion, it is a medical procedure and should remain confidential. Placing abortion information and statistics online only serves to ostracize women from their communities.

VeriChip, the corporation known for human-implantable RFID microchips, bought Steel Vault back in September. Steel Vault is a company that specializes in identity theft protection, credit monitoring, and credit reports. Together, they will become PositiveID.

The formation of PositiveID represents the convergence of a pioneer in personal health records, VeriChip, with a leader in the identity security space, Steel Vault, focused on access and security of a consumer’s critical data. The companies believe that joining personal health records and identity security solutions provides a solid foundation for organic growth and a strong, flexible platform for future offers.

Commenting on the transaction, Mr. Silverman stated, “We believe the acquisition of Steel Vault will provide a powerful platform to differentiate ourselves among both the consumer and medical community. PositiveID will be the first company of its kind to combine a successful identity security business with one of the world’s first personal health records through our Health Link business. PositiveID will address some of the most important issues affecting our society today with our identification tools and technologies for consumers and businesses.”

Combining medical records on the same chip as your credit score is quite scary. One would assume that there would be blocks put into place so that your financial details stay out of the hands of the medical world and vice versa, however, the link between the two is evident and PositiveID has not stated how the chips will be secured.

Your entire life should not be stored on an RFID chip. While some argue that making your health information readily accessible to medical personnel, there is no need to combine it with your financial information.

Continued Silverman, “VeriChip will be able to market its personal health record offerings to the rapidly growing customers of Steel Vault, while Steel Vault should be able to further expand its customer base by offering a unique suite of both security and healthcare offerings. As we focus on securing consumers’ financial information and addressing the critical need for secure, online personal health records, we believe we are well positioned to benefit from federal stimulus funding. We will keep patients involved in their health care as medical records migrate to the Internet.”

Personally, I do not want my health information all over the Internet. Yes, that includes the “what if it could save your life” scenarios that people keep throwing out as a positive reason to have such a system. These systems have been proven time and again that they cannot be 100% secured. If my data is at risk, then keep it on paper. I’ve traveled around the world and never had a problem. The likelihood that I would need my medical data on the Internet is slim at best.

Identity theft is the number one crime in the United States and as many as 10 million people are victims each year. Additionally, medical errors contribute to countless deaths each year due to a lack of or incorrect patient information. PositiveID will address the significant market need to monitor critical data on an ongoing basis to protect consumers and ensure data integrity and safety.

PositiveID says they will address the significant need for this monitoring, yet they don’t detail how they will do it. Stating that they will monitor it on an ongoing basis is impossible. If you force every citizen in America to have their data online, you cannot simply monitor it constantly. Breaches will occur. Jackasses will monitor the data. People with something to gain will sell the data. It’s a nightmare just waiting to happen, yet we are willing to sit back and say, “Sure, make my data less secure.”

Right now, my medical information lies in two places. One is in my old pediatrician’s office basement. I know this because I needed a copy of something and it took several weeks (I was not in a hurry) because they were in a locked room in the basement of the office. The other is in my doctor’s office. Everything is a paper copy. You physically have to search to find my information. If this information is placed online, you can find out my details and change it remotely.

What happens if I am old and forgetful and someone hacks into the system and changes my medicine or dosages? What happens if that break in is by someone who works in my doctor’s office and is authorized to change my medical data. Is the constantly monitored system going to pick this up? There are simply not enough people to watch the ever changing data in people’s files to be able to catch slip ups.

Computers can only output data that you’ve put in. It is not capable of the subtle changes a human would pick up. That is why we need to be vigilant in jumping into situations that haven’t been researched or thought out. In this case, the human is worth more than the stock’s bottom line and we should remember this before we so readily put so much of our personal, private information into the public’s hands.

The HPV vaccine, which was rushed to market, has suffered from bad press due to the prevalence of its side effects.  Though many vaccines have side effect, the fact that HPV was pushed through testing has led to higher rates of side effects, including death, that was initially though.

Known on the market as Gardasil, the vaccine has seen large side effects, including fainting, blood clots, and death.  A new report from the Journal of the American Medical Association confirms this.

Just as NaturalNews has consistently reported, the vaccine has caused an extraordinary number of adverse side effects. And now comes word from the JAMA report that the HPV vaccine has unexpectedly caused episodes of fainting and life-threatening blood clots. In fact, in a statement to the media, these events were called “disproportional” — meaning these side effects are anything but rare. What’s more, among the 12,424 adverse reaction reports about the HPV vaccine, 772 (6.2 percent) were serious and included 32 reports of death.

Other problems caused by the vaccine include local site reactions, skin rashes, nausea, dizziness, headaches and even Guillain-Barre syndrome (a disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system sometimes causing paralysis) and anaphylaxis (hypersensitivity reaction that can cause sudden death). As just reported by CBS news, the teenage daughter of physician Scott Ratner and his wife was one of the unfortunate girls who became severely ill with a chronic autoimmune disease, myofasciitis, after her first dose of Gardasil. Dr. Ratner told CBS his daughter was so ill with the neurological problem “..she’d have been better off getting cervical cancer than the vaccination.”

One the lead researchers for Gardasil has also gone public this week, telling CBS news there is no data showing that the vaccine even remains effective beyond five years. That means that if a ten year old girl is given the vaccine and subjected to possibly serious and even life-threatening side effects, the vaccine may offer her no protection at all when she hits her teens or young adulthood.

So, the vaccine is pretty much useless to the children that it is marketing it towards and gives your daughter the chance of getting something worse, so that the pharmaceutical companies can make money.

What makes the debate about Gardasil crazy to begin with is that studies have shown 70 to 90 percent of people with HPV naturally clear the virus from the body within two years of infection — with no help from drugs or vaccines. So the most effective protection from problems caused by HPV is to avoid being infected by the multiple strains of HPV by not engaging in promiscuous, unprotected-by-condoms sex (the virus is transmitted sexually and condoms do not offer 100 percent protection) and by keeping your body’s immune system strong and healthy through good nutrition, exercise and exposure to sunlight.

In essence, if your daughter practices responsible sexual behavior, she dramatically lowers the risk of exposure to the virus with no help from any sort of drugs.  Why would you want to subject your daughter to such risks?

This drug does not help to reduce exposure to cancer. It is, however, increasing the risks of convulsions, fevers, paralysis, and other severe side effects in girls aged 12 and 13.  Is your daughter’s life really worth risking for an ineffective vaccine?