ArticleEthical theory and moral practice : an international forum2021
The Right Not to Know: some Steps towards a Compromise.
Article in Ethical theory and moral practice : an international forum, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The full spectrum of ethical issues in pediatric genome-wide sequencing: a systematic qualitative review.BMC pediatrics · 2021Pooled it
- Navigating patients' refusal of information in clinical practice - a clinical scenario.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2026Article
- Ethical considerations of disclosure of iatrogenic cerebral amyloid angiopathy.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Article
- Running in the FAMILY: understanding and predicting the intergenerational transmission of mental illness.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2024Article
- Systematic cascade screening in the Danish Fabry Disease Centre: 20 years of a national single-centre experience.PloS one · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
There is an ongoing debate in medicine about whether patients have a 'right not to know' pertinent medical information, such as diagnoses of life-altering diseases. While this debate has employed various ethical concepts, probably the most widely-used by both defenders and detractors of the right is autonomy. Whereas defenders of the right not to know typically employ a 'liberty' conception of autonomy, according to which to be autonomous involves doing what one wants to do, opponents of the right not to know often employ a 'duty' understanding, viewing autonomy as involving an obligation to be self-governing. The central contribution of this paper is in showing that neither view of autonomy can reasonably be said to support the extreme stances on the right not to know that they are sometimes taken to. That is, neither can a liberty view properly defend a right not to know without limits, nor can a duty view form the basis of an absolute rejection of the right not to know. While there is still theoretical distance between these two approaches, we conclude that the views are considerably closer on this issue than they first appear, opening the way for a possible compromise.
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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.