Lucky Luke takes an HIV test

First, let us explain: You may have heard of Franco-Belgian cartoon cowboy Lucky Luke. In this post, Lucky Luke is an alias of another mysterious cartoon character. We decided to replace the <other cartoon character> with Lucky Luke for added privacy.

Recently, a statement made the news about spooks or hackers: they know your HIV status, the claim warned.

Do they?

The report reminded us of a chat with German experts about privacy of medical data in the context of a nationwide patient database project. Back in the corner of the U.S. we hail from, you can go and take an anonymous HIV test.
While this is in stark contrast to much simpler diseases, the reasons for anonymous HIV testing are truly compelling. We assumed the same enlightened approach would be the natural state of the matter in Germany.

Not quite, the expert said. There is one German state, known for minor mountains and beer, where HIV testing is not anonymous. If you walk into a doctor's office to get tested in this state, you will end up being reported to the state health authorities should the test come back positive. However, you may get lucky: doctors can thwart government curiosity.

We only test Lucky Luke, said the expert.


So, you are saying that anybody who comes in to get tested is given the name Lucky Luke?  Yes, you pay out of pocket, we put Lucky Luke on the form, the lab does the test, the insurer does not know, and neither will the government.

As it turns out, this practice is not limited to the state of Bavaria but is routine in many, if not virtually all, doctors' offices across the country. Clinics and individual doctors across Germany have been doing this for a long time. Outside of the confines of the yodel state with its overly nosy health bureaucracy, practitioners worry about wider data protection, mainly dodgy or illegal ways in which insurance companies try to procure highly sensitive data like your HIV status.

No, we have no idea whether the spooks have identified the fact that many Germans named Lucky Luke seem to have no fixed address, no bank account, not even a telephone.

Now, if you use Lucky Luke as your user name for some online activity, maybe the information above should make you reconsider the choice of online character. Unfortunately, we do not have a full list of all cartoon characters who take HIV tests in Germany. If you are a health professional in the K-Land, we would appreciate you sharing those names with us.

And a big kudos to German health professionals for doing the right thing.