Physician Duty to Warn a Patient's Offspring of Hereditary Genetic Defects: Balancing the Patient's Right to Confidentiality against the Family Member's Right to Know-Can or Should Tarasoff Apply
![handle is hein.journals/qhlj4 and id is 7 raw text is: Physician Duty to Warn a Patient's Offspring
of Hereditary Genetic Defects: Balancing the
Patient's Right to Confidentiality Against
the Family Member's Right to Know
Can or Should Tarasoff' Apply
By Michelle R. Kingt
If personal medical information does not remain confidential, the
quality of health care is compromised for all who use it. 2
I. Introduction
Modem genetics is rooted in the work of Gregor Mendel,
whose undertaking in the nineteenth century with snow peas,
led to the linking of genes to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).'
The genetics movement was revolutionized in this century by
James Watson and Francis Crick when they discovered that DNA
is a double helical structure consisting of four repeating bases.'
Most recently, the establishment of the Human Genome Project
(HGP) has given scientists and the medical field hope for a bet-
ter understanding of genetic principles.' The HGP was created
t Boston University School of Public Health, M.P.H. 2000; Widener University
School of Law, J.D., 1999. I would like to dedicate this article to my mother whose
unconditional love and support have made all of my achievements possible.
Additionally, I would like to specially thank Prof. Leonard Glantz from Boston
University School of Public Health for his devoted guidance and persistent questioning
throughout my editorial process.
I Tarasoff v. Regents of the Univ. of Cal., 551 P.2d 334 (Cal. 1976).
2 STATEMENT OF SEN. EDWARD M. KENNEDY, HEARING ON MEDICAL RECORDS CONFI-
DENTLIITy- RESPONSES TO THE SECRETARY's REcOMMENDATIONS, available at http://ww.
senate.gov/member/ma/ke. . .eral/statements/971028records.html (visited Oct. 20,
1999).
3 BARRY R. FuRRoW ET AL., BIoETHics: HEALTH CARE LAW AND ETHics 150 (3d ed.
1997) *(discussion of the early genetics movement).
4 'Watson and Crick determined that DNA is made of adenine, guanine, cytocine,
and thymine (AG,C,T), which sequentially repeat billions of times to form a genome.
BARRY R. FuRRow ET AL., supra note 3, at 150. See also About the Human Genome Project, at
http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/project/about.html (last visited Oct. 15, 1999) [hereinaf-
ter HGP Information] (stating that a genome is all the DNA in an organism, including
its genes and generally has 3 billion pairs of A, T, C, and G bases).
5 The Human Genome Project is a $3 billion project, co-funded by the U.S. De-](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/qhlj4&div=6&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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