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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday August 26 2017, @11:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the scarlet-letters dept.

A health insurer has accidentally exposed the HIV status of some customers with letters that can be partially read through a clear piece of plastic:

Health insurance company Aetna "stunned" some of its customers last month when it accidentally made their HIV statuses visible from the outside of envelopes, two legal groups said Thursday. The letters, which contained information about changes in pharmacy benefits and access to HIV medications, were sent to about 12,000 customers across multiple states, Aetna confirmed in a statement.

For some of these customers, a plastic window on the envelope exposed not only the patient's name and address, but also a reference to filling prescriptions for HIV medications. This meant that whoever picked up the mail that day — a family member, a friend, a postal worker — would have been able to see the confidential information, according to the Legal Action Center and the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania. It is not known exactly how many customers were affected.

Attorneys from both legal groups wrote to Aetna on Thursday demanding that the company immediately stop sending customers mail that "illegally discloses that they are taking HIV medication." It also demanded that the insurer take necessary measures to make sure such a breach doesn't happen again.

The legal groups wrote on behalf of Aetna customers in Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia, according to their letter. The attorneys have so far received 23 complaints regarding the misstep, and more continue to come in, CNN reported.

The Legal Action Center and the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania provided this image of a Brooklyn, NY customer's letter, attached to their demand letter (PDF). The text reads: "Dear [REDACTED], The purpose of this letter is to advise you of options [...] Aetna health plan when filing prescriptions for HIV Medic [...] members can use a retail pharmacy or a mail order pharma".

Also at BBC, NPR, and STAT News.


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  • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday August 26 2017, @01:55PM (15 children)

    by Nuke (3162) on Saturday August 26 2017, @01:55PM (#559435)

    You cannot catch cancer off someone like you can catch AIDS.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @02:08PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @02:08PM (#559439)

    Sure you can:
    http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199611143352004 [nejm.org]
    http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM198612043152314 [nejm.org]

    This is done all the time in mice and rats btw. You inject a cancer into them and watch it grow (usually they also have suppressed immune systems though).

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by physicsmajor on Saturday August 26 2017, @02:31PM (8 children)

      by physicsmajor (1471) on Saturday August 26 2017, @02:31PM (#559448)

      And that's the entire point. Cancer from someone else has a different genome base, and your immune system kills it right off. So unless 'you' are a mouse sans immune system, this is not true.

      There are very few cancers which are transmissible in this manner; none are known in humans.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonally_transmissible_cancer [wikipedia.org]

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday August 26 2017, @02:35PM (2 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday August 26 2017, @02:35PM (#559450) Journal

        I'm having an evil grinchy idea... obtain someone's DNA from a database, use it to create cancer cells based on their own genome, and then find a way to infect them with it. Could be a murder that you get away with completely.

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        • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday August 26 2017, @03:10PM (1 child)

          by fustakrakich (6150) on Saturday August 26 2017, @03:10PM (#559460) Journal

          Nah, the heart attack gun [blogspot.com] is much quicker. Heh, pix = 1K

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          • (Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Saturday August 26 2017, @06:22PM

            by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 26 2017, @06:22PM (#559521) Journal

            But much more obvious. You could set things up so that someone scratched themselves on something infected with the live culture.

            The problem with the idea is that most cancers are killed by the immune system, so you'd need to configure it with several mutational changes designed to defuse the immune system. This is a lot trickier, though it could be done.

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      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @02:47PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @02:47PM (#559454)

        Did you even check the abstracts? It does happen to people with no sign of immune deficiency:
        "Five months later, the surgeon consulted a hand specialist because of a hard, circumscribed, tumor-like swelling, 3.0 cm (1.2 in.) in diameter, in his left palm at the base of the middle finger, where he had been injured during the operation. An extensive examination, including laboratory tests, did not reveal any signs of immune deficiency."
        http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199611143352004 [nejm.org]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @03:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @03:45PM (#559470)

        Cancer from someone else has a different genome base, and your immune system kills it right off. So unless 'you' are a mouse sans immune system, this is not true.

        So what you're saying is, you can get cancer from others only if you have some kind of, I dunno, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome?

        Man, talk about a double whammy...

      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday August 26 2017, @06:17PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 26 2017, @06:17PM (#559518) Journal

        Well, there's the cancer that is killing off the Tasmanian Devils, and I believe that dogs have a contagious genital cancer...but you're generally right.

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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @08:29PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @08:29PM (#559572)

        Your link says they are rare in humans.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @08:12AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @08:12AM (#562010)

        none are known in humans =/= rare in humans

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @04:04PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @04:04PM (#559478)

    So far, there is no transmissible cancer in humans. (this is for dogs, Tasmanian devils, and clams) We don't need to warn other people about cancer, generally.

    There are transmissible viruses that cause cancer. We should warn about those.

    Every other transmissible long-term illness needs a warning too. If your cubicle neighbor has tuberculosis, you ought to know. A registered letter ought to suffice.

    HIV is a transmissible long-term illness. Everybody who is reasonably likely to interact with you in a way that could spread it (all family members) should be informed. To protect people that aren't publicly known to interact with you, your status ought to be posted on a web site.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @04:19PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @04:19PM (#559482)

      So far, there is no transmissible cancer in humans.

      Just wait until it is discovered most cancers are transmissible... it needs to be an entire cell passed from one person to the other though, much like HIV.

      • (Score: 2) by rleigh on Saturday August 26 2017, @04:29PM (1 child)

        by rleigh (4887) on Saturday August 26 2017, @04:29PM (#559487) Homepage

        It's already known that it's transmissible for some cancers, for example HPV. Some are clearly caused by external factors like exposure to UV, carginogens etc., but an increasing number are found to be triggered by viral infection. Which will open up new avenues for prevention and treatment. HPV vaccination, for example. It will be interesting whether vaccination and immunotherapy etc. will be the cure (or prevention) of numerous other cancers.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @04:36PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @04:36PM (#559490)

          This was the idea when the "War on Cancer" was initiated in the 1970s. It is just a retro-fad like most of medical thinking.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @07:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @07:18PM (#559536)

    No but apparently you can catch stupid