ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the requirement of medical confidentiality and its exceptions. It considers cases where truth-telling seems to conflict with other values in clinical practice. The chapter distinguishes some main types of deception in medicine. It evaluates main reasons for a right to remain ignorant about one's own genetic makeup. Patients and health care providers have a special relationship that is fundamental to the goals of medicine. According to one of the oldest ethical rules in Western medicine, health care providers have a duty not to reveal confidential medical information about their patients. For Kantians, medical confidentiality is an absolute duty supported by the Categorical Imperative. For virtue ethicists, medical confidentiality is not so much a duty of health care providers as a practice betokening a trait of their character. Genetic testing now allows patients to acquire information about the risks for them and their future children of developing certain diseases.
