So, what could be considered a "good secret"? Hmm . . . I've been given prior knowledge of gifts soon to be given, marriage proposals soon to be offered, the identity of people who are admired from afar, pregnancies not yet made common knowledge to friends and family, and friends and family members' "true" sexual orientation. What do I consider to be a "bad secret"? Well to me, it's, more or less, being made privy to information I feel uncomfortable about knowing. Examples? (These examples are similar, but not exact. Sorry, but my lips are sealed.) Adulteries being committed, cheating on SOs, considerations being made pertaining to whether or not a friendship would develop into an affair, substance abuse (legal and illegal), clandestine "outings" of homosexual friends and relatives, unbeknownst to the people involved, among many other discomforting confidentialities. And I keep them all, "good" or "bad."
Since I was young, I've hated when I've shared a secret with someone I trusted, only to have the information become the topic of choice for my entire sphere of "friends" or family (or as I phrase it, having it put under "the community microscope") to be analyzed, critiqued, judged, and/or ridiculed and, even worse, passed on to some subthread of my "circle" to have the very same things done with the information. Why? Easy; it was emotionally hurtful, mortifying and, frankly, stung like a b*tch. So, I decided early on never to practice this behavior and to never contribute to this type of behavior.
As a young adult in my 20's, I ended a friendship because someone I thought to be a friend betrayed my trust by sharing confidential information I'd shared with them to another friend. Of course, as news like this seems to do, the information came full circle back to me. When I confronted my former friend and asked them why they betrayed my confidence, their reply was, "I shared the information with (insert third party's name here) because we were up late one night talking and I felt comfortable enough and trusted them enough to tell them what you shared with me. You shouldn't be mad at me about it, you should be glad that my friendship with them is becoming stronger and that I've come to trust them enough that I can share information like this with them." My reply? "The good thing about a conversation like this is that we'll never have it again."
I found it saddening and maddening when "friends" and/or family would want to gossip about others in our circle or outside of our circle and I feel the same way to this day. I've heard mutual friends or family members deemed sluts, liars, poseurs, and just about everything in between that would be considered a "less than" quality to possess. I've learned to contribute nothing to this sort of idle, useless talk and end these conversations as quickly as humanly possible. I've had people confide in me questionable behavior on their own parts, somehow looking to be granted not only some kind of understanding, but also be given some form of absolution or forgiveness.
People have shared with me everything from admitting things such as (fictitious examples, but similar enough to illustrate my point): turning others in for everything ranging from alleged felonious behavior to alleged minor civil infractions, admitting that they didn't follow through with a now-deceased loved ones' final wishes because they didn't agree with them, homosexual friends admitting that they outed other homosexual friends or family members to unknowing siblings or parents, in one instance for no other reason but for the fact that they were tired of the other person "getting away with everything." And why do they come to me? Because I don't tell and I don't judge what they've shared. Why? Because I believe that we've all acted out behavior that we're not exactly proud of at certain points in our lives.
At the time, our choice may have seemed justifiable and "right" in our own minds. At others, maybe all of the other options were worse than the one we chose. Let's face it, in most cases when we make all the "wrong" decisions, it's for what we view, at the time, to be all the "right" reasons. At some point, we've all been stuck between a rock and a hard place and what does one choose when none of the options are good or desirable, but a choice must be made? These are the reasons I don't judge what they've shared.
However, don't think of me in too much of a positive light. I'm guilty too. I'm guilty of not trusting many of these very people who choose to confide in me with personal information about myself. If they've actually done the things they've confided in me about to others, why wouldn't they treat my confidentialities in the same manner to others? Doesn't it just follow?
It seems trust has become a very confusing issue in just about every aspect of our personal lives and our professional lives. Who do we trust in our lives? Our friends and family? Well, I'm guessing most of us do until we're presented with valid reasons not to. It seems that many, like me, value confidentiality.
We look for and value confidentiality when we're choosing an investor. Many of our employers demand it of us, and in writing, no less. Seems there's a whole laundry list of resources available to corporations who want employee confidentiality ranging from employee monitoring to confidential nondisclosure agreements, which are nothing more than secrecy agreements. What this means is that a contract is drawn up and signed by the parties involved through which the parties agree not to disclose information covered by the agreement; in other words, the parties agree to "keep each other's secrets." Does this in any way display a lack of trust? I guess that's for the individuals involved to decide. I can report that I signed one with a former employer, many, many years ago, and being asked to do so made me feel very uncomfortable and suspect.
We look for and value trust in our healthcare providers. However, I read a troubling article that gave me pause regarding some of the doctors we trust to help us make the best, and most well informed decisions regarding our healthcare. (I deliberately stress some here, because I do not want to give any indication that this information pertains to all doctors.) Researchers say that a troubling number of doctors do not feel obligated to tell patients about medical options they oppose morally, nor do they believe they have any duty to refer people elsewhere for such treatments, according to a survey of 1,144 doctors around the country.
The study, conducted by University of Chicago researchers, found 86 percent of those responding believe doctors are obligated to present all treatment options, and only 71 percent believe they must refer patients to other doctors for treatments they oppose. Slightly more than half the rest said they had no such obligation; the rest were undecided.
Overall, 52 percent said they oppose abortion, 42 percent opposed prescribing birth control to 14- to 16-year-olds without parental approval, and 17 percent objected to sedating patients near death.
Dr. Jeffrey Ecker, chairman of the committee on ethics at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said that it is possible many doctors in the survey who opposed such disclosures and referrals may be practicing in specialties where they don't face those issues; Ecker also said that doctors must let patients explicitly know if they are opposed to particular services.
The study showed that doctors are more religious than the general public; some 46% of doctors said they attend religious services at least twice a month, in comparison to 40 percent of the general public. The study also showed that 58 percent of the doctors who participated in the survey stated that they carry their religious beliefs into the workplace, in contrast to 73 percent of the general public.
Do these figures make you as uncomfortable as they make me? Hopefully the doctors who participated in this study were being honest, but the fact is that only they know for sure. Do the results make me mistrustful? Honestly, they do a bit.
We trust the FDA as the authoritative voice in monitoring the safety of the drugs that our pharmaceutical companies are producing. And we trust that if and/or when violations of this trust occur that they'll be handled in a responsible fashion. We trust that when the drugs produced do cause harm or death, that the public will be made aware of the possible harm that these drugs could cause. We trust that appropriate reparations will be made to those harmed by these drugs when these incidents occur. And it would seem that the process pretty much runs this way, but with a slight twist.
When Eli Lilly & Co. recently settled 18,000 lawsuits brought by people claiming they were injured by the side effects of, Zyprexa, the enormous monetary settlements said volumes more about the dangers of secrecy than the dangers of Zyprexa. Approximately 18 months ago, when Lilly settled some 8,000 other Zyprexa cases for $700 million, the plaintiffs were required to to return all sensitive documents obtained through the legal discovery process to Lilly. This requirement kept the strongest smoking-gun evidence out of the public eye. The plaintiffs also had to agree "not to communicate, publish or cause to be published, in any public or business forum or context, any statement, whether written or oral, concerning the specific events, facts or circumstances giving rise to [their] claims."
Lilly had strong motivation to settle. The documents contained evidence that Zyprexa caused large, often enormous, weight gain in many patients, significantly increasing the risk of dangerously high blood-sugar levels and diabetes. They also showed that Lilly knew about the problems in 1999. And knew of it largely through its own research. Other documents outlined a marketing scheme to encourage physicians to prescribe Zyprexa for elderly patients with early signs of dementia. This strategy not only had no clinical evidence to support it, it promoted an "off-label" use not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, a violation of federal law. (Emphasis mine)
(An interesting sidenote: This last sentence shocked me as, several years ago, I'd been prescribed certain medications for depression that, according to the PDR, were to be used solely for convulsive disorders. While I was writing this diary, I called a relative who is a pharmacologist and has worked for quite a number of the pharmaceutical companies, in various capacities, over the course of their career. And they told me that this statement is accurate and true. They said that sales reps for Big Pharma tout many uses for certain drugs to doctors, which are patently untrue. Uses that leave the patient little legal recourse should they or a loved one suffer harm or even death from unapproved use of the drug. They said that doctors and patients have been and continue to be deceived and directed me to this informative, yet unsettling, article at the FDA's website. Read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions.)
So, how does this type of secrecy benefit the public? It doesn't.
When secrecy is the cost of a legal settlement, wrongdoers hide their mistakes as if they never happened and continue with business as usual. That's what happened in the Lilly case. The thousands of plaintiffs and dozens of lawyers involved in the 2005 settlements kept their part of the bargain, while Lilly continued to sell Zyprexa in huge quantities, a reported $4.2 billion in sales in 2005, without warning either patients or doctors about the drug's dangers.
Is there any recourse to this deliberate deception? Not much.
Courts only have the power to grant protective orders only to limit the disclosure of highly personal information and legitimate trade secrets. However, judges often grant protection even if the trade secrets in question show how the product doesn't work, not how it does, provided all lawyers involved in the case agree. I believe the most important question here is whether or not it should be legally allowable for lawyers and/or judges to be parties to secret "arrangements" that conceal evidence of dangers to the public?
In the Zyprexa cases, the documents eventually were exposed when Alaska attorney James B. Gottstein, working on an entirely unrelated case, subpoenaed the records of one of the plaintiffs' expert witnesses. Gottstein not only used the documents in his lawsuit but, to his great credit, disclosed them to the New York Times and several healthcare groups. Gottstein was almost immediately ordered to return all the documents he had, but the train had left the station: The New York Times published articles about the dangers of Zyprexa, and excerpts from the documents began appearing on the Internet. Within two weeks, with much of the Zyprexa evidence now out in the open, Lilly settled the additional 18,000 cases. Negotiated secrecy, Lilly's primary goal, had become moot.
So, who does one trust? I've always been of the opinion that trust has to be earned and I'm very wary of people to begin with. I will also offer that I'm a hard case after the first deception is discovered. Seconds chances are hard to come by and rarely offered. Forgiveness and the reestablishment of trust depends on the degree of the deception and what place the deceiver holds in my life. Speaking solely for myself, make no mistake, a lie is a lie no matter how one candy-coats it, and with every lie, comes a lack of trust.
