Because maintaining strict confidentiality is often untenable, or even illegal, determining the extent of protections in the postmortem context ultimately entails a weighing of the various interests at stake.

Students are not obligated to keep their instructors' behavior and remarks confidential.

A medical student has no duty to refrain from repeating a clinical instructor’s comments except for patient-revealing elements. He may, in fact, have a duty to repeat those remarks to someone who can correct the instructor.

Genomics holds great promise for enabling clinicians to identify the cause of illness more rapidly and precisely and less expensively than traditional methods, but it may be hampered by the patenting of gene sequences responsible for illness by companies that discover them.

Clinical utility is a test’s contribution to health outcomes, while personal utility considers the psychosocial and lifestyle effects and the value of the information to the patient.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics’ opinion on disclosure of patients’ genetic test results.

Genomics yields more knowledge about individuals than we have ever had before; we must be cautious stewards of that information.

A medical school project in which students' genetic information is the subject of study raises many ethical questions.

To stay abreast of advances in genetics and genomics, health care professionals should attain competencies in this area, learn to use point-of-care decision-support tools related to genetic testing and diagnoses, and counteract the spread of misconceptions about the certainty, sensitivity, and cost of genetic test results.

Because the number of patients undergoing genetic testing is increasing, medical staff should be conscientious about their patients' potential needs for genetic counseling and be ready to advise patients on communicating their diagnoses to at-risk family members or refer them to genetic counselors.