And doctors take the Hippocratic oath, pledging to hold sacred their patients' secrets.

You get the gist; the experience is intrusive. Have you been depressed or been treated for mental illness. Patients expect it, or they would not be forthcoming. Have you ever used marijuana or cocaine. Ever had a sexually transmitted disease. But the doctor-patient relationship was never meant to be other than confidential and privileged and solely for the benefit of the patient.

Doctors are supposed to be nosy. Have you used Botox or had plastic surgery. Physicians are trained to peer into your life, past and present, and ask all sorts of sensitive, if not uncomfortable, questions. And how about your marriage € or marriages. It's not just that they examine your naked body inside and out and record all its imperfections. How much do you smoke or drink. This pledge of confidentiality, however, is now challenged by a world where computers rule and health information falls into many hands.

One might well ask whether medical privacy is just too outmoded a concept.