Medical Surveillance and Medical Confidentiality in an Age of Transition: The Debate over Cancer Registration in West Germany

In the 1970s, cancer registries emerged as an essential tool in West Germany's efforts to control cancer. However, they assumed this new importance at the very moment when the West German public was becoming increasingly concerned about personal privacy and the potential harms resulting from the collection and use of personal information, and the ensuing debate over information access and privacy became one of the central axes for a broader rethinking of medical confidentiality between the 1970s and the early 1990s. Although this debate explored the complex relationship between patient privacy, patient treatment and the public interest as it spiralled across the 1980s, in the prevailing political climate, it proved impossible to devise an acceptable compromise. The conflict was not resolved until the turn of the 1990s, when technological and administrative innovation made it possible to sidestep the issue of consent with regard to cancer registration.