Who gets a peek at online medical information?
By Neil Osterweil WebMD Feature Reviewed By Charlotte Grayson It’s 10 a.m. Do you know where your medical records are? That’s a question that has a lot of people worried. What if the boss found about that mental health problem you were treated for? Or suppose the life insurance company comes sniffing around to see if you’ll be able to keep up with the monthly premiums in a few years. Maybe your cholesterol is higher than you’d like it to be but don’t want your family to nag you into giving up cheeseburgers. Or maybe your company finds out that you’ve got a genetic time bomb ticking away inside you — a rare disease that could cause serious health problems for you and send the company’s health insurance costs through the roof. Sound like a paranoid nightmare? Not to Terri Sergeant. In 1999, Sergeant, an office manager for an insurance broker in South Carolina, was fired when a genetic test revealed that she had an inherited respiratory disease known as alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency. Th
