ReviewTheoretical medicine and bioethics2001
Ignorance, information and autonomy.
Review in Theoretical medicine and bioethics, 2001. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed.
- Navigating patients' refusal of information in clinical practice - a clinical scenario.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2026Article
- Integrating Genetic Information into the Electronic Health Record: The Case of Adolescents' Revelation of Misattributed Parentage.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2026Article
- The Right Not to Know: some Steps towards a Compromise.Ethical theory and moral practice : an international forum · 2021Article
- Article
- The right not to know and the obligation to know.Journal of medical ethics · 2020Article
- Ethical values supporting the disclosure of incidental and secondary findings in clinical genomic testing: a qualitative study.BMC medical ethics · 2020Article
- Pregnancy in Advanced Kidney Disease: Clinical Practice Considerations on a Challenging Combination.Nephron · 2020Article
- Rethinking the "open future" argument against predictive genetic testing of children.Genetics in medicine : official journal of the American College of Medical Genetics · 2019Article
- The Right to Know: A Revised Standard for Reporting Incidental Findings.The Hastings Center report · 2018Article
- REFUTING THE RIGHT NOT TO KNOW.Journal of health care law & policy · 2017Article
- Free Choice and Patient Best Interests.Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy · 2016Article
- Article
- Consent to epistemic interventions: a contribution to the debate on the right (not) to know.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2016Article
- Incidental findings of uncertain significance: To know or not to know--that is not the question.BMC medical ethics · 2016Article
- Looking for Trouble: Preventive Genomic Sequencing in the General Population and the Role of Patient Choice.The American journal of bioethics : AJOB · 2015Article
- Scrutinizing the Right Not to Know.The American journal of bioethics : AJOB · 2015Article
- The relative importance of undesirable truths.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2013Article
- Giving and withholding of information following genomic screening: challenges identified in a study of primary care physicians in Estonia.Journal of genetic counseling · 2012Article
- Can Broad Consent be Informed Consent?Public health ethics · 2011Article
- AUTONOMY, LIBERTY, AND MEDICAL DECISION-MAKING.The Cambridge law journal · 2011Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
People have a powerful interest in genetic privacy and its associated claim to ignorance, and some equally powerful desires to be shielded from disturbing information are often voiced. We argue, however, that there is no such thing as a right to remain in ignorance, where a fight is understood as an entitlement that trumps competing claims. This does not of course mean that information must always be forced upon unwilling recipients, only that there is no prima facie entitlement to be protected from true or honest information about oneself. Any claims to be shielded from information about the self must compete on equal terms with claims based in the rights and interests of others. In balancing the weight and importance of rival considerations about giving or withholding information, if rights claims have any place, rights are more likely to be defensible on the side of honest communication of information rather than in defence of ignorance. The right to free speech and the right to decline to accept responsibility to take decisions for others imposed by those others seem to us more plausible candidates for fully fledged rights in this field than any purported right to ignorance. Finally, and most importantly, if the right to autonomy is invoked, a proper understanding of the distinction between claims to liberty and claims to autonomy show that the principle of autonomy, as it is understood in contemporary social ethics and English law, supports the giving rather than the withholding of information in most circumstances.
Indexed as
Identifiers
11808677What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.