Chunk #100 — PART II. CORE QUESTIONS — F. What is the Content of those Responsibilities? Four Issues and Who Should Address Them — Step 4: Recontacting the contributor to offer the finding
A further question is to whom the finding should be communicated—the contributor or the contributor’s primary care physician (PCP). In our prior project’s paper, we argued that offering return of findings to the research participant was ethically preferable to insisting on return to the PCP.1 We suggested that many people did not have an established PCP, and that individuals may wish to protect their privacy by deciding what clinician to consult and where the information should be recorded. However, there was debate in the follow-on project presented here about the merits of return directly to contributors versus to their PCP. An available compromise is to ask contributors whether they wish to receive information about such findings themselves or would prefer to receive the information through their PCP or another clinician whom they can identify.
