A Double Standard on Privacy?

I've got more thoughts on yesterday's NYT piece about George Mitchell asking for the medical records of players like Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro, which he won't get.

Ever since baseball's steroid problem came to the forefront, there have been a number of sportswriters and such advocating that MLB players, if they are innocent, voluntarily turn over their medical records, etc. to prove it to the general public. Skip Bayless was the latest to advocate this on yesterday's edition of First Take (weird typing that instead of Cold Pizza, isn't it?), and that line of thought deserves an answer. Say what you will about the MLBPA and its obtuseness to the steroid problem; they stand up for the best interests of their members, and the best interest involves keeping certain things private, even when the demands of public opinion dictate otherwise.

No matter your political leanings, the trend over the past few decades has resulted in a lessening of privacy: cell phone companies can sell your phone records; the federal government can monitor those same records for its own ends. Whether you actually are subject to random drug tests at your job or not, the odds are likely that you sign a piece of paper when you're hired that you will subject yourself to them. There are very few ensconced things in law that are truly private. Attorney-client privilege and doctor-patient are a couple of them, and even some aspects of your medical records don't necessarily fall under HIPAA, which is the law intended to keep your medical records private unless released with your consent. Insurance companies already assess your medical information to determine what you pay in coverage, or if you are covered.

Are we comfortable asking athletes to cough up their medical records in order to prove a case against them? We shouldn't be, if only for purely selfish reasons -- if a precedent is established of superstars, the creme de la creme of athletics, being forced by public opinion to open their medical histories to investigators to convict them after they have been convicted in the court of public opinion, then we should take the advice: "Physician, heal thyself." What we ask of the most public in society will eventually be asked of us by our own employers.