Have you been depressed or been treated for mental illness.

Ever had a sexually transmitted disease. One might well ask whether medical privacy is just too outmoded a concept for today's information-hungry world. Physicians are trained to peer into your life, past and present, and ask all sorts of sensitive, if not uncomfortable, questions. You get the gist; the experience is intrusive. It's not just that they examine your naked body inside and out and record all its imperfections. Electronic medical records have become. How much do you smoke or drink.

But the doctor-patient relationship was never meant to be other than confidential and privileged and solely for the benefit of the patient.

And doctors take the Hippocratic oath, pledging to hold sacred their patients' secrets. Have you ever used marijuana or cocaine. Patients expect it, or they would not be forthcoming. Have you used Botox or had plastic surgery. Doctors are supposed to be nosy. And how about your marriage € or marriages.

This pledge of confidentiality, however, is now challenged by a world where computers rule and health information falls into many hands.