Toddlergate: Privacy versus public duty

From Daily Herald:

SPRINGFIELD - If you're asking voters to elect you, do they deserve to know you've got cancer or some other potentially life-threatening disease?

The question sparked hot debate across the Chicago area last week, in the wake of news that Cook County Board President Todd Stroger had been diagnosed with prostate cancer prior to his election in November, though he did not make that public until now.

It's a touchy subject in a modern era of both heightened medical privacy and yet often increasing attention to personal details of public officials.

Add in the fact that people like Stroger oversee billions of taxpayer dollars and the question of whether health or other personal issues allow them to effectively do their jobs suddenly no longer looks like a tawdry invasion of privacy.

"I do think there's a difference between someone in public life and someone in private life. I don't think anyone in private life has any responsibility to disclose their problems to anyone else.

But I think when you're in public life people do have some right to know what is going on in the lives of public officials, whether they can serve, discharge their responsibilities," said former

Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan, whose three bouts with cancer during his tenure in public office played out in headlines and news reports.