You're absolutely correct about the informed patient bit; I have developed the policy of checking the PDR entry for any medication I take. And found out about some interactions my doctor didn't tell me about. There's a paradox about Andy Grove's situation: if he starts browsing medical databases and someone can analyze his traffic, or scans his traffic on a closed but not encrypted private email support group, they can deduce much about his condition. Now since everyone else knows about Grove's situation anyway (I suppose he talked about it) and it was brought up regarding my comments about pharmaceutical interactions (and in those comments I was acting reflexively towards a phobia about medical interactions) it's a moot point concerning the medical side and his privacy information; but the privacy angle still needs to be considered in the general case: In order for someone to do this in complete privacy, encryption would have to be ubiquitous; the norm, rather than the exception it is now. There aren't records of who looks up something in the PDR at your local library, but an ISP could gather much info about its users from what sites they frequent... Phil Fraering The above is the opinion of neither my internet pgf@acadian.net service provider nor my employer. 318/261-9649