Comment by nubg
5 days ago
Why be so secretive? This is not a military mission. These missions cost a lot of taxpayer money (money well spend you may argue), but we deserve full transparency. You don't get to go to space on other people's money and expect privacy. We might want to learn from what went wrong here.
> Why be so secretive? This is not a military mission. These missions cost a lot of taxpayer money (money well spend you may argue), but we deserve full transparency.
We deserve as much transparency as we can get on the science we as taxpayers paid for, not full de-anonymization of the bodily happenings of living crew. There's certainly valuable science here, but the crew member doesn't have to be outed for it.
> You don't get to go to space on other people's money and expect privacy.
I don't think this is a healthy mindset, and there's a heck of a slippery slope with this argument. Would we apply this to companies receiving federal grants too? Contractors? Universities? Schools? That's a lot of people who'll lose medical privacy for something probably unrelated to their job, and there'll be a much smaller applicant pool for the jobs themselves if applicants are aware that their own internal issues might be disclosed when the public clamors for it.
> We might want to learn from what went wrong here.
Agree, NASA certainly will, and new science and engineering will come of it that we benefit from. But that doesn't have to involve breaching medical privacy and ethics.
I remember watching a landing and the camera cut away when one of the returning astronauts got sick.
These are human beings and employees not Big Brother contestants.
The full on dystopian take would be to require anyone receiving welfare or other public funds to fully disclose all of their private details.
You want Medicaid? Tell everyone about your hemorrhoids first.
Does that include those working for a company that gets tax breaks?
The fun part is absolutely everyone is using stuff made with public funds at one point or another
Might actually be a net benefit and lead to de-stigmatizing human health conditions
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What difference would this make to you? It would unnecessarily violate someone’s medical privacy for no actual benefit to the public other than satisfying someone’s curiosity.
> You don't get to go to space on other people's money and expect privacy.
Yes, everyone gets privacy. You don’t get to see their private communications back home. You don’t get their medical records.
They aren’t receiving money from taxpayers like a gift. They’re doing a job. It’s ridiculous to demand that they forfeit their privacy because tax money was involved.
> We might want to learn from what went wrong here.
NASA will learn what went wrong here because they’re in a position to act on
You are not in a position to do anything about it. Violating their privacy would make no difference.
Without taking a side, I'll share the interesting detail that NASA did not historically grant much medical privacy to astronauts. You can read medical reports of the Apollo-Soyuz crew here (documenting their poisoning by toxic rocket fuel, dinitrogen tetroxide),
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19770023791 ("The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: Medical report" (1977))
Since this is a special publication and since it was published in 1977 (after the Privacy Act of 1974), I'm wondering if NASA's condition for astronauts on this mission was to release mission-related medical science to the public.
Speculating:
If this is a condition of employment as an astronaut, then it probably wouldn't include conditions confirmed not to be caused by being in space, which means this'll stay confidential until NASA has fully diagnosed the crew member and figured out what likely happened.
And if it turns out the crew member's issue was entirely unrelated to the mission, it stays under wraps but new science or procedures are devised to better manage this and related conditions in space.
These are free people (who happen to have a job that involves a space program). They have the same rights to [try to] keep their medical concerns private as you and I do.
It does cost a lot of money to keep their jobs going, but: They're not slaves. We do not own these people.
The astronaut in question may choose to disclose that they had the medical emergency and possibly its nature, but it seems wholly reasonable to not single them out (when it affects the whole mission) or disclose their medical status.
Especially since every movement up and down from space is expensive and risks the life of the crew, it'd be a bad idea for NASA to name the astronaut ahead of time.
Disagree; this is completely taxpayer funded and we deserve to know every detail relevant to mission status. In this scenario knowing what illness and why it's grounds for a return is very relevant. That said, I can see NASA delaying information release to figure out a good strategy for it while still respecting any wishes of the sick astronaut with regards to disclosure.
The school is tax-payer funded, but I don't get to know why every teacher called out sick.
Government employees, contractors, etc. don't owe your curiousity satiety. We are buying their service, not their soul.
The CIA is also taxpayer funded. Do you have similar expectations of transparency into their missions?
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When you drive on a taxpayer funded road, should you disclose publicly your medical history? When the taxpayer funded US military kidnap a foreign president on your name, should you disclose publicly your medical history ? When you use the taxpayer funded GPS etc...
Does your employer get to know every little detail of your medical conditions when you call in sick? After all they're funding it.
What a strange take. Does this also apply to every soldier in the armed forces? Seems your criteria is equally applicable there.
The relevant people that can do the research and write future policies based on the data obviously will have the information. Not sure what good you think that you personally having it can do.
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Yes, but at the same time I think NASA has long earned the trust to decide these things. Regardless of the issue, nobody wants their health issues aired to the entire world. I am personally okay just not knowing the intimate details.
Demanding every intimate personal detail of a human whose paycheck you happen to underwrite feels a little ... inhumane.
What possible use is it to the taxpayer to know who was affected by what health condition? NASA knows who the person is, if there is any lesson to be learned this policy isn't stopping them. What lesson do you, random citizen, expect to learn? What would you do differently if you had access to this information?
If it is policy to overshare medical details, that might lead astronauts to delay or refuse to give medical information that does matter to the mission. Before we talk at all of medical ethics, on purely pragmatic grounds this information ought to be confidential.
Perhaps you should chill and wait until they land before you start with your ridiculous paranoid thinking and entitlement?
People in general expect privacy when it comes to medical issues.
I think it’s possible to be sufficiently transparent while simultaneously keeping someone’s personal health status private.
As a hypothetical example, it’s possible to disclose if this health issue was known before they were selected for the mission, and if it was, what processes were in place to determine if they should or should not go, etc, all without revealing personal health information.
When I say I want full transparency, I usually am talking about how much pay they received and in the case of elected representatives, their net worth at least once a year.
I wouldn't ask for a full health report to be made public by law. Maybe a summary for elected officials.
Why do you need to know how much they are paid and their net worth? What difference does it make to you? Public official pay is already available online. A quick google search will tell you how much congress people get paid, and the DoD pay scale is available online as well.
> Public official pay is already available online. A quick google search will tell you how much congress people get paid, and the DoD pay scale is available online as well.
That is the transparency in action.
Do you seriously believe that you should have the right to demand access to the private medical records of every teacher, soldier, judge, cop, etc. in the country because their pay comes from taxpayers? If yes I'm not quite sure how to respond, IMO that's an utterly absurd position. If no, why are astronauts being singled out for this treatment?
May be it would be better to have a full diagnosis after splashdown?
> We might want to learn from what went wrong here.
I'm sure NASA is keeping good records and will take lessons learned from this situation, but they can do that without blasting someone's private medical information out publicly.
I don't think taxes being used can justify a breach of medical confidentiality
You know that golden ballroom Trump has been constructing with your tax dollars isn’t going to be for the public either…
The only medical condition I can think of which they would not disclose is pregnancy. That would lead to further questions and is controversial despite being very simple. Further evidenced by the fact that the affected crew member is unknown to the public.
That alone is enough reason to have a policy of never disclosing medical conditions.
> Further evidenced by the fact that the affected crew member is unknown to the public.
Nope. On a previous mission one of the crew members had to sped a night in hospital after touchdown. They never said who, or what for. This is standard procedure, and for good reason.
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