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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 3 page paper considers a test case of medical data mining in a morally permissible and morally impermissible version; and three features that could be used to discriminate between the two versions. Bibliography lists 1 source.
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3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVMedDta.rtf
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and turned over to third parties-at least under certain conditions. This paper describes a test case in a morally permissible and morally impermissible version; and three features that could be
used to discriminate between the two versions. Discussion The test case, if presented neutrally, is this: Physicians Computer Network (PCN) collects pharmaceutical data from thousands of physicians; it rewards the
doctors with state-of-the-art computers. It then sells the information to pharmaceutical companies, which in turn use it to determine how effective their drugs are. PCN says that patient confidentiality is
maintained at all times, because company officials give their word that the names of the patients are not included on the records it sells to the drug companies. But it
should be noted that there are no government oversights on this kind of data mining, and no one monitors the information PCN gathers. An article on the ethics of data
mining of any kind suggests that there are two approaches than can be used to "mitigate the effects of ethical compromise. Firstly, privacy-preservation mechanisms can be put in place that
limit access to data, restrict the scope of queries or perturb, hide or delete data so that undesired responses do not occur" (Fule and Roddick). The problems with this approach
are immediately clear: incomplete responses will be of little value to a company that is trying to "fine tune" its medicines. The other approach is to allow unlimited mining
but use some sort of "alerting process" that informs users about the "potentially sensitivies [sic] of rules; i.e., to manage rather than eliminate the task" (Fule and Roddick). The problem
here is that "sensitivity is context dependent" (Fule and Roddick). That means that it is impossible to devise a rule that can be applied globally. Going back to the
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