Doctor-Celebrity Confidentiality: Does It Even Exist?

Aug. 29, 2008 — -- Mostly, it's a pretty good deal to be rich and famous in America — unless you come down with a dread disease and someone leaks your medical information. What do you do? What can you do?

As Christina Applegate discovered last week, the options are limited.

She is just the latest celebrity to find her medical troubles in a tabloid. Patrick Swayze, Britney Spears, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Dennis Quaid, George Clooney, Farrah Fawcett — all in recent years have seen information from their medical records, or those of loved ones, spread in the press and on the Internet — without their permission and sometimes in violation of the law.

Sometimes leaks stem from happenstance.

"I've been at the doctor's office and had another person in the waiting room call and report that I was there — I think it's appalling," says actress Jennifer Garner.

But often celebrities suspect that medical personnel or loved ones have been lured by money to share intimate details. In a celebrity-mad culture in which stars' medical problems have high news value and tabloids have deep pockets, the people's right to know about Swayze's pancreatic cancer or TomKat's baby sonogram or Clooney's injuries in a motorcycle accident trumps celebrities' right to keep their medical records private.

Unsurprisingly, celebrities, their publicists and their lawyers are bitter, even though there's nothing new about this: Elizabeth Taylor's many medical crises have been tabloid fodder for decades. What's new now, they say, is the increased public appetite for any celebrity news, the increased competition to get that news and the cash some outlets wave to entice people.

"Every time you think the bar can't get any lower, it gets lower. It's beyond outrageous," says publicist Ken Sunshine. "This is way, way over the line and indefensible in a civilized society."

Blair Berk, a Los Angeles lawyer who has represented many celebrities, says no one should have to give up all rights to privacy just because he's famous.