<p>Yes, alh, that is what I meant.</p>
<p>As mentioned upthread, I interpret the law as protecting physicians against suit in the event they miss something they COULD have known, that might have lead to the birth of a child somebody doesn’t want. I am sure it can be used in ways other than it was intended, but I would hate to be held financially responsible for not making sure every patient understood every possible bad outcome that science is capable of foretelling.</p>
<p>^ That’s what most laws about wrongful birth lawsuits (to protect doctors) entail. This one is unique in that it includes “omission” as one of the protections. That’s what makes it different <em>I believe</em>.</p>
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<p>NO. All information should be made available to a woman, and procedures such as ultrasound should be offered. NOT forced on her. When pregnant women have sonograms, often the sex of the baby is known to the technician. Should this information be forced upon a woman who prefers to be surprised?</p>
<p>Make information easy to access. Beyond that, FORCE neither information nor “moral values” on someone who does not consent.</p>
<p>I can hardly believe we are having this discussion in 2012.</p>
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Really for the first time in history humans have the ability to affect the population makeup on a very large scale. China’s one child policy has resulted in an imbalance of young men to young women leaving some 100 million men without potential mates within their country. India is now looking at a similar situation. How that will play out remains to be seen. It may take several generations to know what the long-term outcome is. </p>
<p>At one time eugenics was a popular concept. Then it was associated with nazis and forced sterilizations, etc. and went out of favor. Now we have the ability to screen out a lot of genetic issues in utero, so there is some resurgence in the whole idea. I don’t remember the stat, but something like 80% of Down’s Syndrome fetuses are aborted, and there are probably a lot of women who have voluntary sterilizations after 40 to avoid the risk of conceiving a child with severe genetic problems.</p>
<p>Omission or intentional omission? I just had a doctor do a blood test and he
Filed away the results without informing me.</p>
<p>So a patient comes to me severely depressed, and overwhelmed with anxiety (of the hypochondiracal variety, and she will be the first to admit it). Her OB refers her to see if she should be back on psychotropics during the pregnancy. Most of the data on meds during pregnancy say that there is a lot we don’t know. But there are reports out there of complications that may or may not be related. Is it an omission if I don’t find every one of those and inform my patient? Is it an omission if i don’t go over the anecdotal reports in scientific journals, until she understands what might be an insignificant risk? Or what if I decide in her current state, more information is not better?</p>
<p>Well I was pretty worried, and might STILL be for the next 21 years, since that is the statute of limitations in these cases.</p>
<p>shrinkrap:</p>
<p>Are there any journal articles that aren’t available in an on-line search? Is this an example of something that a patient couldn’t research on her own? If she asks specifically about possible complications, how would you answer?</p>
<p>edit: okay, I see you added to the story. Do you feel you have to answer the possible complications question and, if so, how thoroughly? Sometimes when patients don’t ask, they don’t want to know - right?</p>
<p>edit 2: It is TatinG’s right to ask for the results of her blood test. Some might say it is her responsibility, but not me.</p>
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We know a number of couples with 3 children of the same sex. I can see wanting to try specifically for one of the opposite sex if you are reaching the cap on how many trials you want to raise :).
With our first two, we didn’t find out the gender in advance, but if our third had progressed I would have wanted to know even if I didn’t tell H. If the fetus has a genetic problem, then the woman definitely should be told, even if that involves revealing the gender (as could well be the case, since some conditions only affect males or only females).</p>
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<p>WHY would a woman get a test done to see if anything is wrong with her baby if she didn’t want to know if something was wrong with her baby? Not even remotely close to the same thing.</p>
<p>"Are there any journal articles that aren’t available in an on-line search? Is this an example of something that a patient couldn’t research on her own? "</p>
<p>Well actually MOST journals require subscriptions to access on the internet, so certainly. Also, some are quite esoteric, and highly specialized. But more to the point, interpreting scientific literature, and sometimes tests, is not that easy. I might have to read something three or four times, and STILL consult with someone to make sure I understand what it is saying. an then there is the question of statistical significance, and how that relates to an individual patient, as opposed to the study group. </p>
<p>The patient i am thinking of was TERRIFIED by all the lawyer commercials that run off a list of remotely possible problems associated with SSRI’s during pregnancy.</p>
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<p>That’s really not the issue I was describing, and I think that’s pretty clear. As it stands, a woman has a right to request to not know the sex of her baby. Certainly, her physician could say, “If the sex of your baby would have clinical significance, would you still not want to know?” Whatever her response, it should be respected.</p>
<p>Patients need to follow up with a physician themselves. Tests do get mislaid, misfiled and physicians and their staff sometimes forget to call the patients to tell them test results. Omissions can be unintentional</p>
<p>It would be very hard to prove that a doctor intentionally did not tell a patient the results.</p>
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<p>I vehemently disagree. If you “misplace” something as critical as a genetic test, you have NO place being a doctor. </p>
<p>“Oh I forgot to tell you you have cancer? Whoops. My bad.”</p>
<h1>91</h1>
<p>I grew up in a house full of medical journals so my perception of this is probably skewed.</p>
<p>Do universities generally have all these subscriptions?</p>
<p>It sounds like she was talking to you about possible complications. I was taught to ask my doctor: is this the treatment you would recommend for your wife, daughter, sister, mother? And I used to feel pretty confident about that. … not so much now.
…</p>
<p>edit: If she was watching those commercials, it seems to me she had the ability to refuse meds during pregnancy, that you couldn’t really coerce her. Of course, even after you prescribed them, you couldn’t force her to take them… unless she was hospitalized, which becomes a whole new situation.</p>
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<p>I can say that my large, public U does. I don’t know if it’s available to the general public, but it’s available to the public if you come to our library. </p>
<p>I know this because my minor is in bioethics and I have had to access many of them. Both medical and philosophical.</p>
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<p>Good point.</p>
<p>I believe that even with the most up-to-date techniques, there is some small risk involved in amniocentesis.</p>
<p>If the mother isn’t going to be given the results of the amniocentesis, what is the point in doing the procedure? Why should she take on any risk?</p>
<p>WE believe that girl babies are as valuable as boy babies</p>
<p>Do we really?</p>
<p>I think most Americans do, emeraldkity4, except when a family has had several children of the same gender and would really like to have one of the other gender.</p>
<p>Don’t a lot of us really want to have at least one of our children be of the same gender that we are?</p>
<p>I have one of each. In terms of personality and interests – and even medical problems – I have much more in common with my son than my daughter, and my husband has much more in common with our daughter than our son.</p>
<p>Yet I would have felt that I had missed out on something if I didn’t have at least one girl, and I think my husband would have felt the same way if we didn’t have at least one boy.</p>
<p>ek, the “we” meant the people making the laws if they made a law that you couldn’t terminate a pregnancy based on gender.</p>