Disclosing non paternity in genetic counselling: in Italy the law overcomes the bioethical debate

Nowadays, the frequency of children identified as being biologically fathered by someone other than the man who believes he is the father is such that, in the field of genetic counselling, it is likely to encounter cases of false paternity. The false paternity information, neither requested nor expected by the families in many cases, seems to regard only the “father” of the family but has repercussions for the entire family. By now, it has been accepted that genetic information is, by its nature, both individual and familial. The ethical-deontological debate centres on whether or not to inform the family about the necessity of a paternity test during the counselling and the counsellor’s duty to reveal the results. In this paper, we analyse the Italian legislation on medical professionals’ position concerning the doctor’s role in genetics counselling; recent Sentences by Italian Courts and The Italian Personal Data Protection Code have underlined that the councellor has to give complete information to the people involved, also regarding the possibility to disclose a false paternity, to enable both parents to choose whether they want to know the truth. Because of these statements, it seems that in genetic counselling the respect for the “client’s autonomy” is today prevalent in Italy, not only from an ethicaldeontological point of view, but above all, from a legal one.