Why be so secretive? This is not a military mission. These missions cost a lot of taxpayer money (money well spend you may argue), but we deserve full transparency. You don't get to go to space on other people's money and expect privacy. We might want to learn from what went wrong here.
> Why be so secretive? This is not a military mission. These missions cost a lot of taxpayer money (money well spend you may argue), but we deserve full transparency.
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.
I'm genuinely fine sharing my medical history, but I don't know if my lack of shame about e.g. testicular torsion, or the way that I lost my notes for a bit and unnecessarily got repeats of vaccines I'd already had, are a sign of being in possession of a boring medical history, or an indication of an uncommonly diminished shame response.
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?)
The "I have nothing to hide" argument doesn't work for security, and it doesn't work for health care records either.
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.
I don't know about 'a few specific cases'. STIs, mental health issues, pregnancies (interrupted or not, voluntarily or not), contraception methods and/or lapses, anything often misunderstood like MS or neurodegenerative diseases, huntington, substance use/abuse (voluntary or not), victim of assault (sexual or not), sterility/fertility/impotency/incontinence, any manageable medical issue someone might use to not give you a job, to rent you an apartment, although you do actually manage it well...
None of those I'd want shared anywhere, to anyone, against my will. Those (overall) are not rare.
This is not honestly engaging with GP's statement.
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.
GP did not specify that their thought was scoped to the same people as GGP's (explicitly dystopian) scenario, so I read their comment as working on the kernel of the idea and not the horrifying class-based discriminatory version.
While I am still confident of that assessment, I'll grant you that "obvious" charitable interpretation is not as reliable as it should be. :-/
What difference would this make to you? It would unnecessarily violate someone’s medical privacy for no actual benefit to the public other than satisfying someone’s curiosity.
> 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.
Without taking a side, I'll share the interesting detail that NASA did not historically grant much medical privacy to astronauts. You can read medical reports of the Apollo-Soyuz crew here (documenting their poisoning by toxic rocket fuel, dinitrogen tetroxide),
Since this is a special publication and since it was published in 1977 (after the Privacy Act of 1974), I'm wondering if NASA's condition for astronauts on this mission was to release mission-related medical science to the public.
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.
These are free people (who happen to have a job that involves a space program). They have the same rights to [try to] keep their medical concerns private as you and I do.
It does cost a lot of money to keep their jobs going, but: They're not slaves. We do not own these people.
The astronaut in question may choose to disclose that they had the medical emergency and possibly its nature, but it seems wholly reasonable to not single them out (when it affects the whole mission) or disclose their medical status.
Especially since every movement up and down from space is expensive and risks the life of the crew, it'd be a bad idea for NASA to name the astronaut ahead of time.
Disagree; this is completely taxpayer funded and we deserve to know every detail relevant to mission status. In this scenario knowing what illness and why it's grounds for a return is very relevant. That said, I can see NASA delaying information release to figure out a good strategy for it while still respecting any wishes of the sick astronaut with regards to disclosure.
When you drive on a taxpayer funded road, should you disclose publicly your medical history? When the taxpayer funded US military kidnap a foreign president on your name, should you disclose publicly your medical history ? When you use the taxpayer funded GPS etc...
What a strange take. Does this also apply to every soldier in the armed forces? Seems your criteria is equally applicable there.
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.
> What a strange take. Does this also apply to every soldier in the armed forces? Seems your criteria is equally applicable there.
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.
A single soldier having a medical issue generally doesn't cancel a multi-month mission costing some X large sum of money, requiring another Y large sum of money to even finish cancelling it (returning their unit home).
Therefore it's not relevant and not needed for the public to know.
Yes, I’m sure aircrew never get so violently sick as to affect millions or billions of dollars in crew and and supporting assets due to an emergency, and armed service members are never transported by emergency transportations for eye-watering costs. Technical inequity that ignores facts is the argument of those without arguments.
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.
Yes, but at the same time I think NASA has long earned the trust to decide these things. Regardless of the issue, nobody wants their health issues aired to the entire world. I am personally okay just not knowing the intimate details.
What possible use is it to the taxpayer to know who was affected by what health condition? NASA knows who the person is, if there is any lesson to be learned this policy isn't stopping them. What lesson do you, random citizen, expect to learn? What would you do differently if you had access to this information?
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.
I think it’s possible to be sufficiently transparent while simultaneously keeping someone’s personal health status private.
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.
When I say I want full transparency, I usually am talking about how much pay they received and in the case of elected representatives, their net worth at least once a year.
I wouldn't ask for a full health report to be made public by law. Maybe a summary for elected officials.
Why do you need to know how much they are paid and their net worth? What difference does it make to you? Public official pay is already available online. A quick google search will tell you how much congress people get paid, and the DoD pay scale is available online as well.
> Public official pay is already available online. A quick google search will tell you how much congress people get paid, and the DoD pay scale is available online as well.
Do you seriously believe that you should have the right to demand access to the private medical records of every teacher, soldier, judge, cop, etc. in the country because their pay comes from taxpayers? If yes I'm not quite sure how to respond, IMO that's an utterly absurd position. If no, why are astronauts being singled out for this treatment?
> We might want to learn from what went wrong here.
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.
The only medical condition I can think of which they would not disclose is pregnancy. That would lead to further questions and is controversial despite being very simple. Further evidenced by the fact that the affected crew member is unknown to the public.
> Further evidenced by the fact that the affected crew member is unknown to the public.
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.
