Confidentiality

In a surprise reversal, plans for genetic blood testing of a Florida 9- year-old were called off yesterday after an attorney for the girl's father demanded strict confidentiality. The new demands came after the blood tests had appeared to be set for Monday, and were startling news to a Bucks County couple hoping to learn whether the girl is their daughter - raised by others after a baby-swap they allege occurred at the Florida hospital where she was born. LaVonna L. Vice, an attorney for Ernest and Regina Twigg, the Langhorne couple, said that Dale Swope, a Tampa attorney for the girl's father, insisted yesterday that the Twiggs not reveal the results of the genetic testing to anyone, not even their children.

The House and Senate yesterday passed a measure aimed at protecting the confidentiality of people who are tested for the AIDS virus, while also providing some protection for doctors and others who treat patients who may be infected. Rep. Babette Josephs (D., Phila.), who helped move the bill through the legislature, said she believed it would encourage more people to be tested for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). "The purpose is to make it safer for people to come forward and be tested because their confidentiality will be guaranteed," she said.

In December, Morrisville school board member Paul Bunting made what he thought was a simple request. He asked the district to review the classroom use of a book on the life of Malcolm X and consider removing it because of "derogatory" remarks about white and Jewish people. But when the request was made public, Bunting found himself in the center of what he later termed "a media circus. " He wants to make sure that never happens again. On Wednesday night, the board approved a policy that guarantees confidentiality to people or organizations requesting such reviews.

The school board is considering a draft recommendation of proposed changes to its closed-to-the-public committee system and other procedural matters. The draft, prepared by Board Solicitor Reese A. Davis, was discussed at an executive session before Tuesday night's public board meeting. Chase F. Gibson, the board's president, said the recommended changes likely would be given a first reading at the May 13 meeting. Gibson would not elaborate on the proposed changes, but he said last month that the board would review confidentiality issues and "the recently questioned, but never actually legally challenged, liaison committees of the board.

Peter A. Ubel, a University of Pennsylvania Medical Center doctor and teacher, has ridden the elevator into history. Ubel has conducted the world's only study of what doctors and nurses say while riding up and down. His conclusion: Way, way too much. On Friday, while riding in an elevator for two hours, he discussed his pioneering research. "I admit, lives and deaths aren't decided by conversations in elevators," he said. "But people need to know they can trust the doctor.

We now know that James Holmes, who was charged this week in the Colorado movie theater shooting, had been seeing a psychiatrist, though no one besides his doctor knows how often he was seen or what he said during treatment. According to one report, the psychiatrist warned University of Colorado officials about Holmes, but no further action was taken because he dropped out of graduate school. This raises important legal and ethical questions about what doctors and others providing mental health care ought to do if they believe a patient is dangerous.

One of the most important provisions of the 1968 Pennsylvania Constitution is the article mandating the establishment of a Judicial Inquiry and Review Board, empowered to hear complaints against judges and justices of the peace and, in appropriate cases, to recommend the imposition of discipline by the Supreme Court. The constitution also provides that all proceedings before the board shall be confidential unless and until the board recommends discipline and files the record with the Supreme Court.

First, William G. Stead jumped off the SEPTA train after just five weeks on the job. Now, the Atlanta headhunter firm hired to find candidates to replace Stead as general manager has quit, and the SEPTA board isn't sure what impact it will have on the two-month-old search for a new boss at the troubled transit authority. Charles J. Chalk, president of MSL International, said in a letter to SEPTA board chairman J. Clayton Undercofler III that a breach of confidentiality that occurred when the names of eight candidates were made public has damaged his company's reputation and made further work impossible.

A three-member panel of the Disciplinary Board of the state Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Monday in a case that Supreme Court Justice Rolf R. Larsen initiated four years ago against a West Chester lawyer. Hanging in the balance is the professional fate of lawyer Robert B. Surrick, who has been a staunch critic of both Larsen and the judicial system, which Surrick says has been lax in holding judges accountable. The hearing comes just eight days before the Nov. 3 election, in which Larsen is seeking to win a second 10-year term on the state's highest court.

Few would dispute that a patient's right to confidentiality survives death, but what about a patient's right to disclosure? In the case of an artist or public figure, issues of posthumous disclosure arise again and again. I would suggest that patients' right to disclose their conversations with their therapists also survives death, but here the issue is more complex. If a patient has consented to release all psychiatric records to a biographer, does the deceased patient's family have any rights to privacy?

A Philadelphia nonprofit with ties to State Rep. Dwight Evans mismanaged $1.5 million in state grants since 2006, raising questions about how the money was obtained and spent, according to a confidential state audit. At Evans' direction, the Urban Affairs Coalition put a Philadelphia pastor and his aide on its payroll, the auditors found, then used taxpayer funds to pay them $365,000 for work that auditors said they could not verify. The grants included $1 million that went to renovate a nursing home run by Leland Beloff, a former Philadelphia city councilman who was convicted in an extortion scheme in 1987 with mob boss Nicodemo Scarfo.

We now know that James Holmes, who was charged this week in the Colorado movie theater shooting, had been seeing a psychiatrist, though no one besides his doctor knows how often he was seen or what he said during treatment. According to one report, the psychiatrist warned University of Colorado officials about Holmes, but no further action was taken because he dropped out of graduate school. This raises important legal and ethical questions about what doctors and others providing mental health care ought to do if they believe a patient is dangerous.

Human Genome Sciences Inc. filed a plan with regulators Thursday to try to block GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C.'s $2.6 billion takeover offer for the Maryland-based pharmaceutical company. The shareholder-rights plan — a corporate tactic often called a poison pill because it discourages takeover attempts — was part of several filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It would allow current shareholders to buy stock at a discounted price if anyone acquired more than 15 percent of the stock.

When Pennsylvania's new natural gas law, which takes effect Saturday, was being debated, the focus was on high-profile issues such as the new impact fee. But just before it passed, medical provisions were added that now have some physicians worried it will compromise public health. Except in an emergency, a physician who needs proprietary information about chemicals used in natural gas drilling to assess a patient must provide "a written statement" to a company, according to the act, and must sign a confidentiality agreement.

THE PLAYERS' association believes the leak of NL MVP Ryan Braun's drug test was an isolated occurrence. ESPN reported in December that Braun tested positive for elevated testosterone. Representatives of the Milwaukee outfielder argued during a grievance hearing that specified procedures for handling the sample were not followed, and arbitrator Shyam Das last month overturned the 50-game suspension Braun faced. "Everybody associated with the case is extremely disappointed that it leaked out," union head Michael Weiner said yesterday at the Brewers' training camp.

Judge Kevin Dougherty, head of the city's Juvenile and Family Courts, acknowledged Thursday that in 2002 he placed a young girl in the custody of her aunt, convicted murderer Linda Ann Weston - and added that he did so at the recommendation of the Department of Human Services, a child advocate, and the girl's mother. Police say the child, Beatrice Weston, became a prisoner and endured years of severe abuse in her aunt's custody. Beatrice Weston, now 19, was rescued by investigators earlier this month after police discovered that Linda Weston was keeping four mentally disabled adults in a basement dungeon in Tacony and allegedly stealing their Social Security checks.

When three salesmen from a rival firm offered to come on board at Standard Medical Supply Inc., founder Tony Ferrante thought it would be a way to expand the company. Two years after they arrived, they quit and started a competing business. Now, Ferrante and his erstwhile sales crew are in court in Delaware County, arguing about whether the crew built their new business by making unfair use of Standard's pricing strategy for its product line of bedpans, catheters, and oxygen tanks. When the economy is moving up or down, sensitivity can be heightened to such things as breaches of confidentiality and employee duty of loyalty, trade secrets, and noncompete contracts.

ANDREW Voudouris was only 15 when he joined his older brother, Steve, then 17, and their good friend Chris Francy in launching an online company called Xoxide.com (pronounced ex-oxide) in his parents' garage. They began by selling custom-built computers - and sold them pretty quickly. The company soon morphed into a computer-accessories store, selling everything from elaborately designed cases to PC tachometers, a "speedometer for computers" that the guys invented to measure how hard a computer is working.

Citing undisclosed health reasons and a possible appeal of his conviction and sentence, lawyers for former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo yesterday asked a federal judge to postpone his Aug. 31 surrender to the Bureau of Prisons. If U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter, who on July 14 sentenced Fumo to 55 months in prison, grants the request, the 66-year-old South Philadelphia Democrat could avoid prison for months as legal issues are sorted out. Federal prosecutors filed a notice this month setting the stage for an appeal of Fumo's sentence, which they had called "unduly lenient.