As far as consent, I have only seen two types of medical consent forms.
One is a consent to treatment when the client first enters the system. No
provider will treat someone without that. There are also specialized
consent forms for various procedures, to show that the client has received
information about a particular procedure and understands the risks
beforehand, that is, "informed consent". Medical consent forms will often,
perhaps almost always, have a section about photographs, especially if it's
a teaching hospital. The implication is always that any photos would be
used for training purposes. Here is a sample medical consent form that has
exactly that sort of language: "I agree to have photographs taken for
medical study or research", and also a phrase that the patient will not be
identifiable.
http://www.bestmedicalforms.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Diagnostic-1.jpg
In my experience, people do not read such forms, they just sign them.
Perhaps they are in distress, or perhaps they believe they must sign in
order to get treatment. So I don't believe a medical consent form gives the
kind of consent needed to upload a photo from a medical journal for a WP
article.
I agree the photo is disturbing on many levels. One is that there is no
way of knowing whether the subject is being exploited. Years ago, western
medical texts used to be full of photos that were obviously from
socio-economically disadvantaged areas. So, "legal in some country in the
Global South" is probably a poor standard to apply to choosing medical
photos. Also, imagine you or someone in your family being newly diagnosed
with this condition and coming across this photo that shows someone with
the condition having a mental deficiency, which is obviously not part of
marfan, and perhaps also being treated in a questionable manner. Maybe
"portrays the disease accurately" and "portrays a person with the
condition
with dignity" would be better standards to follow.
The article is still lacking clear illustrations for the eye and aorta
conditions that go with it. There are much better ones online, but not
with the right copyright status. Also scoliosis--the WP article has
several good illustrations for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoliosis
This still leaves the original problem unaddressed, which is how to find
copyright-free medical images. The Marfan Foundation links to a series of
very positive "What does Marfan Syndrome look like" images on Flickr, but
again they are copyrighted.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalmarfanfoundation/albums/7215761264334…
Perhaps the ultimate solution will be to partner with some of these
organizations that are concerned with patient advocacy and get them to
upload some of their photos.
On Sat, Aug 6, 2016 at 3:56 AM, Ellie Kesselman <myindigolife(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Regarding the Marfan syndrome image, I looked into it
as well as I could.
It seems to be allowed for re-use per the terms of the Creative Commons
license in the source article. I changed the description of the image on
Wikimedia Commons to be "13 year old female" instead of woman, but that
doesn't help at all. The use of the image in the Wikipedia article bothers
me a lot, as she is an almost entirely naked 13 year old girl with an IQ of
50 according to the research article. I wish that it was not uploaded to
Commons to begin with. Doc James was the user who uploaded according to the
log. I can't find any reason to get it removed or deleted though. If anyone
else can look into it, as Neotarf mentioned, I would be grateful. In my
previous job, I worked for a state services program that cared for children
with debilitating congenital medical conditions, and this photograph makes
me feel very uncomfortable and sad because it seems exploitative to show
this female child naked from three views on Wikipedia, but I don't know
what to do about it.
--FeralOink
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