Patients expect it, or they would not be forthcoming.

But the doctor-patient relationship was never meant to be other than confidential and privileged and solely for the benefit of the patient. Have you been depressed or been treated for mental illness. Have you ever used marijuana or cocaine. 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.

Ever had a sexually transmitted disease. And how about your marriage € or marriages.

One might well ask whether medical privacy is just too outmoded a concept for today's information-hungry world. Have you used Botox or had plastic surgery. This pledge of confidentiality, however, is now challenged by a world where computers rule and health information falls into many hands. How much do you smoke or drink. It's not just that they examine your naked body inside and out and record all its imperfections. Doctors are supposed to be nosy.

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