An amendment to the Senate health care bill would effectively ban pharmaceutical data mining, the drug-company practice of buying prescription records to target sales pitches to doctors. Democratic Sens. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois say the measure will combat "harassing sales practices" and "restrain undue influence" of pharmaceutical salespersons.
Are such privacy concerns likely to affect other industries' efforts to warehouse and mine information gleaned from various sources?
