Surgeon Live-Streams Gynecological Surgery on Chinese YouTube, Public Outraged

A medical staff member waits outside the operating room as doctors perform a caesarean section at a gynaecology and obstetrics isolation ward in Xiehe hospital in Wuhan, Hubei Province on March 7, 2020. STR/AFP via Getty Images

A male doctor live-streamed a patient’s gynecological procedure on a China video-sharing website without her knowledge, raising a wave of questions on medical ethics and privacy violations.

A Chinese netizen reported that he stumbled across a live-streaming room on Bilibili, China’s video-sharing website similar to YouTube, commonly called B site, on Jan. 15 and heard a female patient ask a female doctor who was present whether the male doctor was the one performing the surgery. The female doctor replied that he was an anesthesiologist. “The female patient expressed reluctance to be approached by the male doctor even though she didn’t know she would be secretly filmed.”