Telling the truth? Disclosure, therapeutic privilege and intersexuality in children.

Family physicians, pediatricians, and geneticists meet a variety of young patients at various stages of the maturing process. As clinicians are privy to information about their patients that may be disturbing, they develop knowledge about human nature and decide, often along with parents, the appropriate level of information for different children and adolescents. And while it may be possible in a clinical sense to delineate the differing stages of understanding of a particular patient, the law may not always recognize these incremental changes. The law insists with few exceptions that those capable of consenting to treatment deserve the disclosure of appropriate information. This ensures that it is the capable patient and not the physician who is making treatment decisions.