Abortion, ethics and tort law : a red herring?

Abstract

I wish to start this editorial by posing a question. Should a young female patient who enters in your clinic, and whose father is known to you as suffering from Huntington’s, be informed of her father’s condition? As you may recall, Huntington’s disease is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder, meaning that having a mutation in only one of the two copies of the HTT gene - the HTT gene provides instructions for making a protein called Huntington - is enough to cause the condition. When a person with Huntington’s has children, each child has a 50% chance of inheriting the mutated gene and developing the condition. So, returning to that young patient of yours who is of childbearing age, would you inform her of her father’s condition or confidentiality would prevail?