Dr Kerryn Phelps, Health Editor, with Steve Leibmann, Channel Nine, 'Today'

PHELPS: Good morning, Steve.

LEIBMANN: I am amazed at this. I would have thought it was a given, that a doctor would be able to tell a client…a patient?

PHELPS: No, it is not. In fact, the only way that you're able to disclose any information at all about an individual's health status is if it poses a serious and imminent threat to the health or safety of another person.

LEIBMANN: Put a brake on it there. How does one then define a)'serious' and b), 'imminent'?

PHELPS: Well, it has to be both, and the legal opinion is that 'imminent' must be within weeks or months. And so, if you're talking about cancer prevention, you'd hopefully like to be able to detect that gene in a person some years before, so that you could start doing surveillance procedures to make sure that if that person develops the cancer, that you'd be able to treat it in time, before it became life threatening. Now under the current law, or as it stands, it has to be a 'serious' and 'imminent' threat to that person's life, so it doesn't fall into that category to be able to tell them that they have this gene that might give them a 50 per cent chance of dying of cancer.

LEIBMANN: So, what are we doing about reviewing the law?

PHELPS: Well, the Australian Law Reform Commission is looking at this particular area, and there is a recommendation to amend this particular part of the law relating to genetic testing. There is a dilemma, because people do have a right to their privacy - they do have a right to have any material, tissue, taken from you, which is used for the purposes of telling them about their own genetic risk, to have that information protected. However, it now appears that there is this unforseen consequence of this law, which is that 'what is the right of the person who is related to that person, who may share that gene pool?'

LEIBMANN: So, how are doctors handling the current situation? I mean, are there some doctors who are saying, 'Look, to hell with the legal requirements of this law. As a doctor, I have a moral obligation to advise the patient.'

PHELPS: No, you have to really stick to your legal obligation, and that is why, if the law is wrong, the law needs to be changed. If the guidelines are wrong, they need to be amended. The best that a doctor can do is to sit down with somebody, and say, 'Listen, this could really have a serious impact on your children, and your other relatives. Can we have your permission to write to them to let them know that they may be at risk of this particular genetic disease. Even if we don't say who the person is that's got the gene that's been carried within your family, can we let them know?' And, you know, many people do give their permission for that.

LEIBMANN: But Kerryn, what happens if the…so, we'll use me as an example. My family, my parents are no longer alive, and the potential for the illness or the disease doesn't become apparent until after they have died. Now, who, how do you get permission to tell me?

PHELPS: It's a very difficult situation, and the point is that you need to have the tissue, the DNA, to be able to test to see if the gene is present to be able to tell that person to go along and have their testing done. So, I mean, the situation is that it's an unintended consequence that has arisen out of the new Privacy Guidelines, and they clearly need to be addressed. We have already had to get amendments to the Privacy Guidelines where it prohibited doctors initially from taking family histories, because that would be keeping information about somebody else in the family, but that is so fundamental to good clinical practice that that was changed.

LEIBMANN: Baby walkers?

PHELPS: Now, this is an interesting one. It's come up again in the Medical Journal of Australia. Since the early 1990's, so we are talking about nine or 10 years, Australian authorities in the safety area have been calling for these baby walkers to be banned, and trying to discourage parents from having a child in them. Now, if you can see a little toddler like that, who is not yet ready to walk, and doesn't have the particular developmental awareness to see danger, can head for stairs, down they go, down the stairs, they can wheel themselves along. It gives them height which they probably shouldn't have at that age and stage of development, and we've got stories of kids grabbing on the …, they're going downstairs and you can see with a reasonably large stair they could tip over. There is also the problem of them getting through from one room to another, because the walkers can fit through doorways, some of them. And also, if they go and grab a frypan cord, they could and have done, pull oil down on top of them, pull boiling water down on top of themselves in the kitchen. So, it's very hard, I think…

LEIBMANN: I mean, if it's a threat to the child's safety, surely, the obvious thing is, you ban them?

PHELPS: Yes. I mean, knowing toddlers as you do, I think that the longer they are immobile the better, because it's less chance of them to get into mischief. I think it's very important for parents to realise that these walkers, while it might get the child up off the ground and, 'Oh, isn't it lovely they look like they're walking', but they really can be very dangerous. In the United Sates, it's something like 20,000 injuries a year from these things, and in Australia it's about 500 a year - they're preventable. These things are not necessary contraptions, and I think parents should think twice before they buy them.

LEIBMANN: See you next week.

Ends