If the Mystery Person is something in the medical field, there may be serious liability and medical malpractices implications if there is a website that offers medical information IN HER NAME. You DEFINITELY need to consult a lawyer before you do a site for her; you could put her in serious financial and professional jeopardy with even a small mistake. (Hey, I work for an association of risk managers--this is not a joke or a trivial matter.)
A website that features her as a personality may also damage her reputation with her peers and make it harder for her to get the grants she needs to do her work. As odd as it may seem, it can get you in trouble if you disseminate scientific or medical information IN THE POPULAR SPHERE unless you do it very carefully, in a manner that's acceptable in the world in which you do your work. Remember what happened to Carl Sagan, after he went on Johnny Carson, did a fancy TV series, and wrote those popular books? His career as a serious astronomer was over. On the other hand, Stephen Jay Gould managed his celebrity much more carefully, and remained a respected scientist until his death. In the website you want to make, can you manage her public image so that it doesn't damage her professional life? Do you know enough about the sociology of scientists and medical researchers to do this? (My husband used to be a scientist--they are a pretty strange lot sometimes!) If you really want to do something about the health problem that is the Mystery Person's field, why not do a website about that particular health problem, with links to some of her publications or articles about her on Oprah? You'll want to use the proper disclaimers, of course, to be legally safe yourself. But a person's image is valuable--the Mystery Person's image is valuable--and it can be easily damaged and used up. To use someone else's image, even in a good cause, is to take something that isn't really yours and that can damage that other person--and that can get in the way of any good that they may have been able to do. --Constance Warner ************************************************************************ * ==> QUICK LIST-COMMAND REFERENCE - Put the following commands in <== * ==> the body of an email & send 'em to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <== * Join the list: SUBSCRIBE COMPUTERGUYS-L Your Name * Too much mail? Try Daily Digests command: SET COMPUTERGUYS-L DIGEST * Tired of the List? Unsubscribe command: SIGNOFF COMPUTERGUYS-L * New address? From OLD address send: CHANGE COMPUTERGUYS-L YourNewAddress * Need more help? Send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************ * List archive at www.mail-archive.com/computerguys-l@listserv.aol.com/ * RSS at www.mail-archive.com/computerguys-l@listserv.aol.com/maillist.xml * Messages bearing the header "X-No-Archive: yes" will not be archived ************************************************************************
