Question

Passage A
The bedrock of clinical ethics is patient autonomy and the corollary principle of medical confidentiality. When genetic testing reveals a mutation predisposing a patient to a severe, onset-delayed disease, physicians often face pressure to warn the patient’s at-risk relatives. However, breaching confidentiality without explicit consent fundamentally undermines the fiduciary nature of the doctor-patient relationship. Without the assurance of absolute privacy, individuals might forgo genetic testing altogether, paradoxically increasing overall harm. While the desire to prevent future suffering is commendable, a physician’s primary ethical obligation remains firmly tethered to the individual who sought their care. Only when an immediate, highly probable, and strictly preventable danger is present—a threshold genetic predispositions rarely meet—can the veil of confidentiality be ethically pierced.

Passage B
Traditional bioethics, rooted in an atomistic view of individual rights, struggles to accommodate the unique nature of genomic data. Genetic information is inherently shared; to diagnose one individual is often to probabilistically diagnose their biological relatives. Therefore, treating genetic test results strictly as private medical records ignores the biological reality of the familial unit. Physicians possess a duty of non-maleficence that extends beyond the immediate patient. When a patient refuses to disclose a preventable genetic risk to family members, the physician must weigh the breach of confidentiality against the potential for grave, avoidable harm. While consent should always be sought first, the ethical mandate to warn relatives—particularly when prophylactic interventions exist—should supersede absolute adherence to patient confidentiality.

Based on the two passages, match each proposition below to the most accurate description of how the authors of Passage A and Passage B would respond to it.