Tweeting medical alerts? Not the best idea

If there was a medical alert, for let's say, a toxic gas release, would you go to Twitter as your primary source of information? What about some regional communicable disease issue? Would you rely on Tweet to bring you the news?

Well according to a report at IEEE Spectrum titled Medical Alerts in 140 Characters or Less, that is exactly what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US is planning.

According to the article:

"The CDC has jumped on the bandwagon with three different feeds, one dedicated to emergency notifications, one specifically for information about the flu, and one that more generally redirects traffic to the CDC site."

One question -- do you trust Twitter to be the purveyor of up-to-date and accurate news?

What about those people, like me, who are not connected?

Then there is the problem of hackers, which Twitter itself addressed in a media statement released on January 5, 2009.

Oh and I am sure that those at Twitter have updated their passwords since July 15 when it was revealed that they had set their server password, as the word password hence allowing access to the search product database.

There was the German political unintelligently, unoriginially titled 'Twittergate', and well, you get the idea.