Open debate continues about whether to warn relatives when a high-risk gene is discovered (Appelbaum, 2004; Offit et al., 2004). In Laegsgaard and Mors’ (2008) Danish survey on psychiatric genetics, 18% of patients, 19% of relatives, and 12% of medical and psychology students supported notifying relatives – without the permission of the tested person – when a pathological gene is discovered (n.s.). A small number of court decisions in the U.S. have suggested that physicians may have an obligation to warn offspring at high risk of inherited conditions or at least to encourage patients to inform relatives at risk of the need for testing (Pate v. Threlkel, 1995; Safer v. Pack, 1996). Such duties appear more likely to be found when the conditions in question can be fatal and when preventive interventions exist. But the law is too fragmentary at this point to predict the dimensions that duties to warn will ultimately assume (Clayton, 2003).
