<p>Are we under the Taliban now? Withholding information about a woman’s pregnancy that the parents could use to better prepare themselves for a birth of a baby with birth defects? It is now OK to lie to patients?</p>
<p>A DOCTOR withheld information from that baby’s parents??? :eek:</p>
<p>If the Dr decides that the parents might have an abortion ( say in the case of a Tay Sachs baby), they cannot be sued if they withheld that information from prenatal test results, but that also takes away the opportunity for the family to prepare for the birth of a child with severe complications as well.</p>
<p>[Worcester</a> Telegram & Gazette - telegram.com - US a scary place to be a woman](<a href=“http://www.telegram.com/article/20120318/COLUMN01/103189869]Worcester”>US a scary place to be a woman)</p>
<p>That is unconscionable. I simply can’t imagine how that’s legal or ethical. </p>
<p>I’m speechless, but not all that surprised given the erosion of women’s reproductive rights. It is an insult to the intelligence of women that information be withheld from her. </p>
<p>The way that babies have the best start in life is when families are prepared. But I guess that doesn’t matter because once they take their first breath, they’re on their own.</p>
<p>It’s insulting, paternalistic and medieval. If this bill passes, then I guess a pregnant woman in Kansas is going to need to ask her doctor about his/her views on abortion before she has any testing done. Otherwise, why bother with the testing at all, if she has no assurance she’ll get the actual results? (Of course, I imagine the doctor will be under no obligation to tell the truth about his/her views on abortion either.)</p>
<p>I wish a doctor would weigh in on this. I emailed that link to my bioethics professor and he doesn’t think it’s ethical by a variety of standards. I wish a doctor would weigh in on whether or not that violates any ethical standards. I thought doctors were required to disclose all information to a patient. Maybe they think the woman is not a patient?</p>
<p>I don’t get it, though. If the patient asks for the Tay Sachs test, isn’t the physician obligated to give her the test results?</p>
<p>And if he (I’m assuming a “he” in these circumstances) doesn’t provide them to her or lies about the test results, it seems to me there’s a rather massive lawsuit waiting to happen.</p>
<p>LOL my comment wasnt directed at anyone in particular, romani. Maybe we should start a new thread about the ethics of taking a medical test and then not getting a complete answer.</p>
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<p>From the AMA code of ethics. </p>
<p>[Opinion</a> 8.082 - Withholding Information from Patients](<a href=“http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-ethics/code-medical-ethics/opinion8082.page]Opinion”>http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-ethics/code-medical-ethics/opinion8082.page)</p>
<p>It would be odd then that a doctor couldn’t be sued, but could lose their medical license for acting unethically. Poetic justice of a sort.</p>
<p>Continued erosion of women’s reproductive rights, among others. Just unbelievable.</p>
<p>From the article:
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<p>If the doctor isn’t going to tell the patient the test results, then why do the test at all. </p>
<p>The only cases in which this could be justified (and which is happening in India and in some other male-centric cultures) is when an ultrasound is requested to determine the sex of the baby so that female babies can be aborted for the defect of being female.</p>
<p>this is weird. I didn’t think I started a new thread because, I didn’t want to get in trouble for being political.</p>
<p>But anyhoo,
*If the doctor isn’t going to tell the patient the test results, then why do the test at all. *
Nowdays, I believe tests may be required by clinic & hospital ins companies in order to continue coverage- to answer your what I assume was a rhetorical question.</p>
<p>I had several ( external)ultrasounds, a non stress test & an amnio with my first & several ultrasounds with my second. My first pregnancy was high risk & I delivered at a level three hospital, my second pregnancy I was planning to deliver at our local neighborhood hospital, but early on in pregnancy I was told that because I had a previous preterm birth ( even though the cause was non repeating), I couldn’t deliver there. ( because of hospitals ins company) Which was irritating, but living in a city I still had other options, which may not be available to all. </p>
<p>I hope that physicians who have a problem with disclosing information to patients will have that noted in their literature so potential patients can self screen themselves depending on how much control they want over their care.
( Same with pharmacists who refuse to dispense prescribed medication because of their beliefs)</p>
<p>I wonder if we will ever see the same restrictions of care imposed on men-say proof that they are impotent & are seeking to impregnate their wives before prescribing medication.</p>
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<p>I love it. You’re right, EK; men should be required to demonstrate these two facts before being prescribed ED drugs. Otherwise, if they’re not impotent or not seeking to impregnate their wives, they’re just looking to have sex for fun!!!</p>
<p>And at the risk of making this thread totally political and being shut down:</p>
<p>There are some religious people who believe that life is precious and, since God is the creator of all life, men (i.e., people) don’t have the right to abort fetuses. I understand their perspective. </p>
<p>However, if one takes that perspective, doesn’t it also follow that God let men (i.e., people) discover various forms of birth control and various forms of abortion? Religious people don’t seem to have a problem with Caesarean sections, which – if you just want to go all natural and “let God take care of things” – doesn’t make any sense to me. That’s pretty heavy duty intervention, IMHO.</p>
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<p>So the clinics and hospital insurance companies will get the results and the patients won’t? (I didn’t think the question was rhetorical.) Will the doctor only tell you the result if it is negative (so you can be relieved)? If so, then if he won’t tell you, you know the result is not good news?</p>
<p>Rubbish!</p>
<p>This is such incredible b<em>ll</em>***. I’m having deja vu of the 1970s all over again.</p>
<p>That’s a good point, elle. </p>
<p>According to the legislation (AFAIK), they’re allowed to flat-out LIE to the patient. It’s not just an omission, it’s a LIE. You might be expecting a happy healthy baby because your doctor said it was, and surprise it’s one that has an extremely devastating disease like Tay Sachs. </p>
<p>Look into Tay Sachs. It’s is a life of heart break and nothing more. There is a reason that couples want to know whether or not their child has something like that. When that child is born, you know you MIGHT have four years with them- four years of watching them deteriorate into nothing until they essentially starve to death. To lie to a parent and say that their child is ok while knowing that they’re going to have nothing but a few years of misery is just horrific. I can’t imagine anyone who took a “do no harm” pledge doing that- although I know they exist.</p>
<p>ETA: Sorry, it’s not specifically telling them to lie, it just provides protection if they do lie. I’m currently trying to find the text of the bill so I can see what it actually says.</p>
<p>Here’s another issue with the bill, apparently (according to a Republican Senator) it could jeopardize the accreditation of The University of Kansas’ Gynecology and Obstetrics department: </p>
<p>[Senate:</a> Abortion bill may come too late | CJOnline.com](<a href=“http://cjonline.com/node/117878]Senate:”>http://cjonline.com/node/117878)</p>
<p>When I was maybe 25 and unmarried, a gynecologist threatened to remove my IUD because he thought women my age should be having children. I swear. Made me want to hold an aspirin between my knees.</p>
<p>If this is all accurate, it seems like insanity (though I automatically am suspicious because when you look at the titles of many articles, this is obviously a very biased newspaper). Another thing that caught my attention was the phrase, “But a crackdown on women’s rights, once mainly confined to the crazy Southern states, is now under way all over the place,” which made me wonder, because many extremely biased people just make the assumption that Southerners are crazy (and stupid), and of course everyone agrees, so…which always irritates me.</p>
<p>On the other hand, all these attempts on what is obviously an all out effort to try to ban abortion piecemeal while one party has control, is only going to backfire. Some of these bills are not going to be passed, but are purely there to appeal to their constituencies. Trying to put restrictions on the gains that women already have is not going to work, people will not go back in time.</p>