Talk:Wiki Project Med/Advocacy

Limits of political advocacy

Many proposed functions of Wikimedia Medicine have overlap with traditional functions of government, particularly the duty to educate the public on health issues. It seems to be the case that in many circumstances a language's local Wikipedia project is better suited to deliver health information which local people demand than, for example, official government health information websites.

Because of special government attention to health education it seems like there is more mutual interest between government action and Wikipedia in the field of health than in other areas, such as popular culture. Because of this shared interest, Wikimedia Medicine plans political advocacy as described on the project page.

What should be the limits of this advocacy? Which of the projects described on the accompanying project page transgress or push the limits? Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:12, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

I reckon we should advocate for anything covered by our mission statement, and not touch anything else political with a bargepole. I've proposed this as a mission statement

to make comprehensive, reliable, well-organised, well-written and well-presented, current, evidence-based medical knowledge available to all people in their preferred language

at Talk:Wikimedia_MED#Quality_of_content. I'm not sure what you mean by political action that wouldn't be simply advancing the goals of the organisation.

I support the ICD being as free as CC-BY-SA, and would expect this group to engage the WHO on this. I think the US already does enforce open access (after a year?) to papers based on work they funded, but other countries could do so too. Is the UK doing anything? I'm not sure I agree with you on unidentified images, but there's nothing wrong with us advocating for that if it gets consensus. I'm not sure about advocating for the acceptance of Wikipedia projects as teaching tools in health education campaigns. I'd like to have all relevant medical pages subjected to scholarly review and locked before that. But, again, if there is consensus for it, I don't see advocating it as being political activism. Just the right thing to do. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:41, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Privacy and media depicting medical conditions

If anyone finds discussions relating to the issue described at the "Statements on fairness of using health media" section of this page then please share here. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:02, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Are you aware of commons:Commons:Patient images? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:23, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

No. Thanks. This is exactly what I wanted. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:57, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Cases

• Moment of birth - 2008 a father gives permission for the release of a photograph of his daughter's birth; people question rights
• encephaly - 2012 This discussion is about deleting a shocking image on the basis of it being identifiable. More here on Commons:Patient images
• The en:Human Tissue Act 2004 which resulted from the en:Alder Hey organs scandal might contain information about using media. A user speaking about the encephaly image proposed this.