Tonight I was watching the news and saw a story about Demi Moore doing crack or something and having a seizure and ending up in rehab. Although I don’t care at all about any of the facts or characters involved in the story, one thing I noticed is that a recording of the 911 call has been released by authorizes only mere hours after the actual event.

This strikes me as incredibly odd because, under Australian (and presumably British and most European) law, anyone seeking medical or emergency assistance from the government is entitled to complete confidentiality and privacy of their information. I work in an Australian hospital managing information and the very first thing you are told when you start the job is that you never, ever, ever disclose any personal information or data about anyone or anything, ever. It isn’t even ethical to talk about the fact that you know any specific piece of information, even to close friends or family members.

So I just think it is utterly bizarre that, in America, something as sensitive and potentially embarrassing such as a 911 phone call is just given to the media, whether edited or not. If Demi Moore is actually in rehab, I doubt she’d be capable of signing a waiver, and even if she was, she probably wouldn’t want to anyway.

It just doesn’t seem in the least bit logical, because even though the patient concerned is a celebrity, the phone call itself isn’t really of any public interest, importance or significance. It just exposed Demi Moore to an unfair degree of public humiliation without greatly benefiting anyone in any way. Is she not entitled to a reasonable degree of personal freedom and privacy?