The drug company Eli Lilly, which manufactures fluoxetine (Prozac), has admitted that it violated its own policy on patient confidentiality by publicising the email addresses of over 700 patients taking the drug.
For the past two years the company has offered patients taking fluoxetine an email reminder service (Medi-messenger). Patients decided what kind of reminder they wanted, such as a reminder to take their medication or to attend a clinic appointment.
An email sent to all Medi-messenger participants on 27 June, announcing that the service was to be discontinued, inadvertently listed the addresses of others who had signed up for the service.
Anne Griffin, an Eli Lilly spokeswoman, said that “a computer program error” was to blame for this breach of confidentiality. “We are very concerned about the error,” she said, “and have had complaints from six people so far. We have a system in place to prevent this from happening again.”
The company's breach in privacy has led to a renewed debate in the United States about the difficulty of protecting confidential patient data that are stored electronically and could be disseminated via the internet.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a civil rights non-profit making organisation, has sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to investigate the breach.
The letter argued that Eli Lilly breached its duty of care towards fluoxetine users. “If this breach of duty goes unnoticed,” said the letter, “it would raise the possibility not only that Eli Lilly will continue to injure consumers and harm the public interest, but that other companies will be encouraged to engage in similarly unfair and deceptive practices.”
The letter from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Federal Trade Commission is at www.aclu.org/news/2001/n070501b.html