Aliens On Earth.com Resources for those who are stranded here Our Bookstore is OPEN Over 5000 new & used titles, competitively priced! Topics: UFOs - Paranormal - Area 51 - Ghosts - Forteana - Conspiracy - History - Biography - Psychology - Religion - Crime - Health - Geography - Maps - Science - Money - Language - Recreation - Technology - Fiction - Other - New Search... for keyword(s)   in Page Titles in Book Title/Author in Contents of Pages ---other searches--- Metacrawler Yahoo FAST Search Google Altavista Dogpile Inference Find Northern Light IWon.com MSN Search Las Vegas Sun Mothership -> UFO -> Updates -> 1997 -> Sep -> Here

From: XianneKei@aol.com
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 14:55:27 -0400 (EDT)
Fwd Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 00:46:47 -0400
Subject: A New Question about Witness Anonymity

Greetings List Members and Our Esteemed Moderator/Owner:

I really admire EBK for all the work he does on this list,
plus he's an all-around good guy, too! Hopefully, he's going
to allow me to touch on the topic of witness anonymity in
relation to abductees.

The subject of abductee anonymity is an important one and I
agree that abductee's should have anonymity, if they so
choose. I don't want to debate when they give up their
anonymity, as we have been there, done that.

My question relates to ethical issues -- something which
has been on my mind of late, as I just now getting around
to reading the papers from the Abduction Conference held
at MIT. A most interesting book, with a lot of excellent
ideas and reasearch.

The way I see it there is NOTHING right now to hold a
non-medical professional to any kind of ethical standard.
This is one of the big problems facing abduction
investigation/research, IMO.

In the medical profession (and probably many other
professions as well) there are ethical standards which
professionals are held to. One of those standards (and
it may even be a law, for all I know) involves a patient's
right to privacy. If an abductee was working with a medical
professional, the abductee would have reasonable assurace
that the professional would be held accountable, if that
privacy was violated. There are ethical committees that
would accept testimony and consider action against a medical
professional who diviulged private information about a
patient.

But that is not so with abductionists -- such as Budd
Hopkins, David Jacobs, Derrel Sims and others who have no
standard to uphold. I'm not saying that ANY of these people
are unethical, but what recourse does an abductee have if
these people violate some promise? There is no committee to
take a complaint to. There is no way to put them out of
business. Your only recourse, IMO, could be a court battle
which would be costly. I don't know how you could even win a
case (but that doesn't mean it's not possible) if one of
these people did violate some promise they made to you, because
these people are not bound to any code of ethics.

The Code of Ethics that has been adopted by CUFOS and MUFON
is a good one, but it is little more than a document. You
can't really hold anyone to it.

I've heard stories of non-medical professionals disclosing
information that they should have kept confidential but I have
no proof.

Other than the putting the word out that a confidentiality has
been breeched, what's to stop a new person from going to these
people for help, unaware that they might not be ethical. Also,
do abductees even realize that these people are under no
obligation, except morally, to upheld your confidences?

John Velez, from time to time, signs his posts "Union Rep." I'm
not a big fan of unions, but I do believe it is time for some
of the myths and fallacies of abduction research  to be put to
bed. Maybe it's time for an abductee's union. A place where
abductees could get responsible information on their rights.

I think a clearing house should be established where complaints
about abuses could be filed and investigated. Maybe that's a witch
hunt, I don't know.

Rebecca