New guidelines nurture fear, not confidence Tomorrow, Health Canada will publish revised recommendations intended to prevent the transmission of bloodborne diseases from physicians and other health care workers to patients. If implemented, these measures will amount to an unprecedented intrusion into the lives of physicians.
Physicians are the vectors of many diseases.
Philipp Semmelweiss independently made the unpopular discovery that physicians were unwittingly transmitting the then-unknown causative agent of puerperal fever to women during delivery. Prudent as these measures may be, none presents the ethical dilemma inherent in the new Health Canada recommendations. This is because none is mandatory. And none, with the possible exception of tuberculosis, involves routine and continuous screening of physicians or the suspension of their privileges. This is an extraordinary step, an infringement of the basic human right to dignity and privacy.