I had some blood tests done this morning, and filled out some forms giving conset to the testing lab to share their test results with my doctor.
Amongst the text of their permission forms was a paragraph saying something like the following:
If you do not wish to receive materials in the mail related to your health, please initial here: _____
Well, I mentally debated whether I wanted to receive this stuff via mail, and eventually settled on not receiving it, but I got to thinking about this on my drive home. How would the lab know what materials would be related to my health?
As you might expect, I’m not one that appreciates junk mail of any kind, so I’m not really into the thoughtless stuffed envelope. And although materials related to my health might be interesting to receive amongst the dreary “$0.98 a roll for Bounty” circulars we’re always getting, it disturbs me that my medical privacy is now a matter in the hands of marketing research.
My thought is this: The lab takes the blood, does the test that the doctor orders, and returns the results to the doctor. There is no analysis of the results. They keep no records beyond the actual results themselves for archival purposes. So how would the lab know what is good for my health?
Maybe I’m a little paranoid here. Maybe they’re just thinking of sending me some pamphlets with general health information. But really, what good is that? And I inferred from what I read that this information would be tailored specifically to me. With all of the confidentiality forms I had to sign just to get them to release my test results to the person who ordered them (Would I be there in the lab asking for the tests if I wasn’t willing to have the doctor get the results?), I’m curious what covers the lab’s use of my results for their own purposes.
For example, I never consented to them using my blood for any kind of testing other than what the doctor ordered for it. But I’m curious now whether this is actually done. For example, they could use my blood to conduct population surveys for different genetic diseases. And since they have my contact info, they could group this by region. I’m sure that this information is valuable to someone - someone who has not paid me for my donation of blood!
I’m only really led to suspect this because of the curious wording of that particular checkbox. As I said, I’m probably paranoid, and really, whether they’re using my blood for anonymous tests doesn’t concern me that much. But the idea that the lab could be doing anything with my blood other than what I or my doctor has asked them to do, that’s bothersome.
Also- I’ve heard people getting tests more extensive than what I had done using much, much less blood than what this lab took. So why two vials?
All of this blood loss is making me freakishly paranoid, I guess. I’ll just keep telling myself, “There is no medical conspiracy…”
