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I explained that some of the problems given in the previous meeting's homework assignment were inspired by Silk and Cyanide which I had recently read. This book was a memoir of the author's experiences as a cryptographer in World War II. Part of the book was devoted to the author's untangling the errors introduced when "hand systems" were actually used by British spies in Nazi-dominated Europe.

Then we had a discussion about medical record privacy. Things went slowly. We discussed a number of the "talking points" suggested on the medical records web page. I asked people to identify themselves a number of times. I'd guess that about 80% of the students there spoke, and about a third of them spoke several times. I need to actually identify people, and to "keep score" -- record those who speak and use a reference for their assertions. Things went better in the first semester. That class had been smaller and I had prepared the discussion session by asked the class to divide into two groups and discuss among themselves opinions about the "talking points" below. I should have done that again, perhaps.

I began the discussion by writing some assertions on the board:

• If I have had treatment for an STD or for emotional distress who needs to know?
• How can an insurance company keep control of possible health care fraud claims or be fiscally responsible if it needs to pay out and make a profit without knowing lots about its patients and their treatment?
• What if drug companies and medical device companies want to know who is "suffering" so they could distribute information about better cures?
• What if you or a child of yours has a rare disease. Wouldn't you want to know about different treatments and the success of these treatments? Who owns such information?
• The real-life Gattaca (a recent movie about the limitations that a genetically determined environment could bring): currently the whole population of Iceland (restricted in number, and historically immigration and emigration not great, and good information about ancestry) is having its entire "genetic code" (DNA?) recorded. Who owns this information? Wouldn't recording such information be good (law enforcement, susceptibility to disease)? Wouldn't it be bad (it could be used to restrict opportunities for some people)? A former student sent in e-mail that "`Gattaca' is composed of the letters used to represent the nucleotide bases which make up DNA: Guanine, Adenine, Thymine, and Cytosine."

I wanted people to work together. I don't think I explained the rules well enough, because I think that some people just took information from others and worked out the answer by themselves. t wasn't clear that they did this.

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