Woman Who Inherited Huntington’s Disease Sues Doctors

AmiMoJo writes: A woman is suing a London NHS trust for not revealing her father had been diagnosed with Huntington’s disease before she had her own child. She only discovered he carried the gene for the degenerative, incurable brain disorder after her daughter was born. The woman then found out she too carried the faulty gene, meaning her daughter has a 50% chance of having it. The story is tragic. In 2007 her father murdered her mother and was found to have Huntington’s, which often results in confusion and violent behavior. She was already pregnant at the time and her father asked that she not be told as he feared she would abort the pregnancy. Doctors were in a bind, with doctor-patient confidentiality on one hand and a duty of care on the other. The woman is arguing that in cases of serious inherited diseases children should have a right to know. She says if she had known she would not have had a child, who has a 50:50 chance of also having Huntington’s and will one day have to look after her confused and possibly violent mother.