San Francisco nurses protest to get Zuckerberg’s name off hospital

A small group of current and former nurses at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital are protesting to have the facility renamed as Facebook is under scrutiny over its privacy practices. 

The New York Times reported Tuesday that protesting nurses say some of their patients are concerned that their own privacy could be in jeopardy since the hospital is named after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 

The 147-year-old hospital was renamed after Zuckerberg in 2015 after he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $75 million to the facility — a move that was approved by the city’s Board of Supervisors as a gift to the couple.

The nurses staged a protest last week outside the hospital, during which they taped over Zuckerberg’s name on signs.

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The small protest of about a dozen nurses was led by Sasha Cuttler. Another nurse at the hospital told the paper Zuckerberg’s name “scares” her patients.

“Had we known what we know now, perhaps we wouldn’t have accepted the funds from Zuckerberg,” John Avalos, a former supervisor for the city, told the Times.

“Look it’s a double-edged sword, and I totally get the loyalty to the name as it was historically,” the hospital’s chief communications officer, Brent Andrew, said, “but this is a thing that’s between the donors and the Board of Supervisors completely.”