[DOWNLOAD] "When Information: Can Save Lives: The Duty to Warn Relatives About Sudden Cardiac Death and Environmental Risks (Report)" by The Hastings Center Report # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: When Information: Can Save Lives: The Duty to Warn Relatives About Sudden Cardiac Death and Environmental Risks (Report)
- Author : The Hastings Center Report
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Life Sciences,Books,Science & Nature,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 202 KB
Description
In certain cases of sudden death, forensic experts may discover during an investigation or autopsy that family members of the deceased are also at risk of harm--from genetic disease, for instance. But do they have a duty to warn them? Looking at similar duties of physicians and researchers to warn third parties of risk suggests they do. If a physician realizes somebody is at genetic risk for a potentially fatal, genetically caused condition, she not only has a duty to warn that person about the risk. She may even have a duty to warn the person's relatives that they may also be at risk. But genetic testing is not the only way we learn about such conditions, and doctors are not the only people who acquire such knowledge. At least in certain cases, forensic experts also acquire important medical knowledge and shoulder a similar burden: they, too, can have a duty to inform family members that they may be at risk for serious harm from, for example, cardiac disease or exposure to environmental toxins. In cases of sudden death and exposure to toxic agents, for example, the forensic expert--who, depending on the country, may be called a medical examiner or a forensic pathologist--is usually the first and only person aware of the risk for family members.