Confidentiality, the law in England, and sexually transmitted diseases.

In the age of information technology and social conscience, traditional medical confidentiality is under threat We are bombarded daily with intimate details of people's private lives by the media, and personal health information does not seem to be exempt. Until now it has been accepted that confidences divulged in good faith by a patient to his medical adviser will be respected as such and will not be disclosed to persons not directly concerned with the medical care of that patient (the third party). A survey ofmost of the important ethical codes will confirm the belief in the autonomy of the individual, and this autonomy will include a person's right to privacy. The law has long recognised that there are areas of anyone's private life in which any reasonable person could fittingly demand to be left alone.' Though violation of a person's privacy is not of itself a punishable offence in English law, the courts do recognise some invasions of privacy that are actionable, and exploring a person's private sexual life is clearly one such form. Catterall succinctly summed up the situation with regard to medical confidentiality and the service in the United Kingdom for sexually transmitted diseases (STD).2 The ethic of medical confidence has been governed for thousands of years by the Hippocratic oath, which asserts: "and whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside of my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets." In the era of "priestly medicine," however, such sentiments were most likely concerned primarily with the main-