Privacy and disclosure in medical genetics examined in an ethics of care

Bioethics. 1991 Jul;5(3):212-32. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8519.1991.tb00161.x.

Abstract

The progress of genetic knowledge magnifies existing ethical problems in medical genetics. Among the most troubling types of problems -- for medicine, patients, and the larger society -- are those of privacy and disclosure. Examples of the range of problems involving privacy and disclosure are: 1) disclosure of false paternity to an unsuspecting husband; 2) disclosure of a patient's genetic make-up to his or her unknowing spouse; 3) disclosure of information, against a patient's wishes, to relatives at genetic risk; 4) disclosure of ambiguous test results; 5) disclosure of adventitious nonmedical information, e.g., fetal sex; and 6) disclosure to institutional third parties, such as employers and insurers....

Publication types

  • Case Reports

MeSH terms

  • Attitude*
  • Confidentiality*
  • Data Collection
  • Decision Making*
  • Duty to Warn
  • Empathy*
  • Employment
  • Ethics*
  • Family
  • Family Relations
  • Female
  • Freedom
  • Genetic Counseling*
  • Genetic Diseases, Inborn
  • Genetic Privacy*
  • Genetic Testing*
  • Heterozygote
  • Human Rights*
  • Humans
  • Information Dissemination
  • Information Services
  • Insurance
  • Men
  • Moral Development
  • Moral Obligations*
  • Morals
  • Paternalism
  • Pedigree*
  • Personal Autonomy
  • Physician-Patient Relations*
  • Physicians*
  • Prenatal Diagnosis
  • Privacy
  • Probability
  • Risk
  • Risk Assessment
  • Sex Determination Analysis
  • Social Justice
  • Social Responsibility*
  • Truth Disclosure
  • Uncertainty
  • Women