| Title: Learning Disabled and Drugged Scenario
Characters: Dr. William Burgess, a Researcher Dr. Eunice Lee, his Colleague Jasmine Chandler, Graduate Research Assistant INTERIOR, DAY. RESEARCH INSTITUTE, A LARGE ROOM WITH MANY PAPERS SPREAD AROUND Jasmine is sorting lab reports into appropriate piles, one pile per subject. Dr.Burgess is writing on a legal pad. Lee is working a spreadsheet . JASMINE Dr. Burgess, what's the name of subject twelve? The teenager who lives at Quinnipiac Terrace? DR.BURGESS Larry Joiner. JASMINE That's the kid who plays soccer, right? Not the kid with the ferrets. DR.BURGESS No, the kid with the ferrets lives in West Haven . JASMINE The guy at the lab spelled his name wrong, but the address is right. DR.BURGESS How did he spell it? JASMINE With a “y”. DR.BURGESS ”J-o-y-n-e-r”? JASMINE ”y-n-O-r” DR.BURGESS Carelessness! One person was reading the names and another one was copying them onto specimen labels. JASMINE But we can still use it, right? DR.BURGESS Sure, there's only one subject at Quinnipiac Terrace. LEE You know, you wouldn't have to be Sherlock Homes to figure out the identities of about half our subjects. I mean, how many learning disabled, potential substance abusers are there? Once you know where they live, their ages and what their hobbies are… a few inquiries around the schoolyard or the pool hall and anybody could put two and two together. DR.BURGESS Which makes it all the more important to keep even the numerically-identified profiles confidential. JASMINE I lock all the folders in the safe every night. LEE But look how easy it was for you guys to figure out! Once we reveal age, gender and neighborhood in the published study, everyone will know who we mean. DR.BURGESS We could name the neighborhood without naming it. JASMINE ”A public housing project with a high incidence of substance abuse…” LEE Which, for anybody who knows New Haven , means “Quinnipiac Terrace.” DR.BURGESS How are they going to know it's New Haven ? LEE Because it's a Yale Study. JASMINE Duh. LEE The real problem is in all the supplementary data you insisted on collecting – hobbies, education level, SES, census tract – you publish that stuff and you might as well tell all the learning disabled substance-abusers in New Haven County that we're blowing the whistle on them. JASMINE You'd have to blow it pretty loud. LEE This is no laughing matter. The protocol, the protocol which we've got now – virtually precludes confidentiality – when we've promised confidentiality. DR.BURGESS So… JASMINE Lawsuit time! LEE The only solution is to throw out all the supplementary data. Forget we ever collected it. “Learning disabled substance abuser” – period. DR.BURGESS Some of the most interesting and potentially valuable issues in the study depend on the supplementary data. LEE Our ability to do future studies in this community depends on our respecting patient privacy. JASMINE Yeah, the lawyers… DR.BURGESS What if we kept the protocol, but expanded the subject pool? Fifty learning disabled subjects and fifty non-learning disabled subjects? JASMINE Uh -- do we have the budget for that?