Expanding the boundaries of informed consent: disclosing alcoholism and HIV status to patients

Since informed consent became legally required in the therapeutic setting, the risks physicians were to disclose have been limited to the risks of particular procedures. Two recent court decisions in which disclosure of surgeons' alcoholism and positive human immunodeficiency virus status was required may begin to erode that limit. The grounds for this expansion of disclosure requirements were inherent in the 20-year-old "materiality" standard for disclosure; nevertheless, the change they signal is profound. These cases may signal a trend that, in the long term, could result in a shift in physician-patient communication and a significant loss of privacy for physicians.