BMJ  2006;332:1274 (27 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7552.1274-a

Letter

Australian public's views on privacy and health research

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Attitudes to privacy in health research are often the subject of debate, however, surprisingly little data exist with which to guide policy. Addressing this gap, Barrett et al recently reported overwhelming support among the British public for legislation to make cancer registration compulsory and found high levels of acceptance for registries being used as sampling frames for research.1 Is this tolerance of research using sensitive health data a peculiarly British trait?

In 2004 the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia undertook surveys of seven stakeholder groups (one of which was the Australian general public) to investigate attitudes to privacy in the realm of health and medical research.2 3 In a random telephone survey 192 out of 301 survey respondents (64%) were in favour of health databases being used for approved research purposes, and a similar proportion supported health research involving record linkage between two or more . . . [Full text of this article]

David C Whiteman, NHMRC senior research fellow

david.whiteman@qimr.edu.au Division of Population Studies and Human Genetics, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Herston, QLD 4006, Australia

Cathy Clutton, acting executive director

Centre for Health Advice, Policy, and Ethics, National Health and Medical Research Council, GPO Box 1421, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia

David Hill, director

Cancer Council Victoria, Carlton, VIC 3053, Australia


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Relevant Article

National survey of British public's views on use of identifiable medical data by the National Cancer Registry
Geraldine Barrett, Jackie A Cassell, Janet L Peacock, and Michel P Coleman
BMJ 2006 332: 1068-1072. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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