Steve Jobs does not have a right to medical privacy

Or not as long as he is chief executive of Apple, anyway.

If you missed this story, Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, had a secret liver transplant two months ago.

That's not what officially happened, though: he was supposed to have had a "hormone imbalance" which led to "more complex issues", according to Apple.

It's the latest fib that he and Apple have told concerning his health: the company didn't disclose that he had had pancreatic cancer in 2004.

But there is now a big legal question: did Apple break US stock market rules by not revealing that Jobs was deathly ill?

(That he was at death's door is hard to argue: the surgeon at the Tennessee hospital has been reported as saying that Jobs was prioritised for surgery because he was the sickest patient on the hospital's waiting list.)

The issue revolves around whether Jobs's illness was a "material questions" to be disclosed to the Securities Exchange. In the US, executives' medical records are not required to be disclosed.

But Jobs's case is different. How? Because Jobs represents most of Apple's value. Without his return in the mid-1990s, the company would have gone bust by 2000.

In a US TV interview yesterday, Warren Buffett described the situation in a nutshell.

"Certainly Steve Jobs is important to Apple," he said. "Whether he is facing serious surgery or not is a material fact."

Jobs is the guy who reinvented the iMac and brought the iPod and iTunes -- by far Apple's most important products -- to fruition. Now, he has driven an enormously successful product, the iPhone, together with its even more important side-product, the App Store.

So if Steve Jobs is about to die, Apple's investors have a right to know. Officially. On the record.

Officially, Apple is insisting that Jobs will return to work by the end of this month. But the average life expectancy of liver transplant survivors is five years.

In my view, Apple investors have already discounted Jobs's full time return. That is why the share price only dipped by two per cent when news of Jobs's liver transplant (broken by the Wall Street Journal last weekend) emerged. They've already moved on.

Comments

[Gerard Cunningham]

In light of the above, any thoughts on the case below?

On 6 January 2008, the Evening Herald published an article about the health of Tony Gregory, TD. The Press Ombudsman found that the article was an intrusion into his privacy. The Press Council upheld the decision, and criticised the practice of doorstepping.

Within a year, the TD was dead, resulting in a bye-election.

http://www.pressombudsman.ie/v2/pressombudsman/portal.php?content=_includes/decisionportal.php&label=fullcase&category=Decided%20by%20Press%20Ombudsman&casename=Gregory%20and%20Evening%20Herald&ID=1

Is the ombudsman missing the point?

[Adrian]

Cautiously disagree with that decision.

It's a little more muddied than the Jobs scenario, however. Gregory didn't hold any crucial balance-of-power position at the time.

Nevertheless, if you put yourself forward for election, give out your address and phone numbers to further that aim and present yourself as a man of energy and vibrancy, ready to work tirelessly, and if that is one of the key planks of your election commitment, then I believe that is fair enough to enquire, even through doorstepping, about your current health.

"The public interest" is an increasingly vague concept, though. It's certainly not 'what the public is interested in'. Because that is, largely, celebrity news, love lives and gossip.

[Paraic Hegarty]

Rights are not absolute and there are situations when your rights may be superseded by the rights of others or by exigent circumstances. I don't know whether shareholders' right to this information supersede Jobs' right to privacy but my own feeling is that it shouldn't. In this particular case, I can't reconcile your comments that "Jobs represents most of Apple's value...Apple's investors have a right to know. Officially. On the record." and that "Apple investors ... have already moved on."

[Cheap Computers]

I think the rest of the board members must take a complete information of its health that he is not pretending but he was operating himself by the doctor for its liver transplant that was not important then is life .......
http://www.electrocomputerwarehouse.com