Why does the author say one-off permission forms 'fail to meet this worry'?
Medical records are among the most sensitive information anyone holds about us, yet pooled and anonymised, they are also an extraordinarily valuable research resource. Patients rarely object to research as such. Their worry is that records will be sold, re-identified or misused. Proposals that ask for permission once, in a long form, fail to meet this worry: the permission is rarely read and cannot anticipate later uses. A better model would let patients see who has accessed their data and for what purpose, set simple limits that can be changed at any time, and impose heavy penalties on those who attempt to re-identify records. Such a regime would be more demanding for researchers, but trust, once lost, is much more costly to restore than a form is to complete.
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: C. They are seldom read and cannot cover uses that nobody foresaw at the time
- Step 1: The passage says the permission 'is rarely read and cannot anticipate later uses'.
- Step 2: The only choice consistent with this is "They are seldom read and cannot cover uses that nobody foresaw at the time".
Answer
They are seldom read and cannot cover uses that nobody foresaw at the time.
Why not the others: Length, refusals, cost and use by private companies are not mentioned.
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