Since it was revealed that Andreas Lubitz – the co-pilot who purposefully crashed Germanwings Flight 9525, killing 150 people – had been treated for psychiatric illness, a debate has ensued over whether privacy laws regarding medical records should be less strict when it comes to professions that carry special responsibilities.
It has been widely argued that Germany’s privacy laws were to blame for the tragedy. The Times, for example, headlined an article: “German obsession with privacy let killer pilot fly.” Similarly, another article published in TIME said “German privacy laws let pilot ‘hide’ his illness from employers”.
While Dirk Fischer, German lawmaker and the transport spokesman for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), called for airlines to have mandatory access to pilots’ medical records, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, president of the German Medical Association (BÄK), disagreed.
