Dr. Phil was recently accused of breaking doctor-patient confidentiality by speaking to the news media about a patient, Britney Spears:
http://tinyurl.com/yp5fb2 Deepak Chopra is talking publicly about a former patient, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Indeed, he describes himself as his doctor in the piece found at: http://tinyurl.com/23lanw This is what Chopra says from the above cited piece: "It was true that after his medical crisis he refused to discuss his health and took pains to indicate that where once I had been his physician, now I was to consider myself in the former position of disciple." So Chopra was Maharishi's physician. But in his piece he discloses personal information about Maharishi of both a medical and personal nature, both of which are protected information. The problem is that the doctor-patient privilege extends even after death. The following is from http://epic.org/privacy/privileges/ : "...only the client can waive the privilege and the privilege survives the client. Therefore, even after a client's death, an attorney can not reveal the information without the prior approval of the client. This was recently articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Swidler & Berlin, et al. v. United States, 524 U.S. 399 (1998) (case regarding "Travelgate," where a grand jury, at the Independent Counsel's request, sought handwritten notes from the attorney for the late Vincent Foster)." Even if the above is incorrect, then at the very least it would be only the estate of Maharishi that could allow him to divulge the information that he did...and I doubt that Deepak got such a permission from the TM organisation...not only because it is too short a time since his death but because of the acrimonious relationship between the two parties, they probably wouldn't give it!
