Collective health and a Sophie’s choice: To defend privacy in cyberspace

Abstract

The world is currently experiencing complex threats to privacy in health (PH) in the context of the growing virtualization of bodies and biographies exposed in social networks. This paper aims to identify the approaches to PH in Brazilian scientific production in the light of Collective Health (CH). This is an exploratory, analytical-descriptive study reviewingpapers from Brazilian Collective Health journals of excellence from 2000 to 2017. Papers employing PH as their object were selected for further analysis. We found that papers are commonly anchored in the perspective that the “professional’s fear of punishment” is the borderline inhibiting PH violation actions. However, neither the legal-normative framework nor the technological security apparatus sufficed. In the Unified Health System (SUS), threats escalate in initiatives of the SUS Card, PEP, Regulatory Centers and Telehealth. The results corroborate a hypothetic gap in the production of the subject in Collective Health journals of excellence. The discussion is about institutional omission; adoption of the ICF for the use of individual data; opacity on the revenue of public expenditure in the technological security apparatus. Respect for PH must bethe result of a political-ethical agreement, in which all start to act ethically in defense of privacy by choice and not coercion and fear of penalties.