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William R. Archer, MD
US Department of Health and Human Services Washington, DC

JAMA. 1992;268(1):50.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—The characteristics of trust and honesty are at the core of the physician-patient relationship. The relationship is recognized as a privileged one by our legal tradition, as is the communication between physician and patient within this relationship. It was addressed by Drs Sugarman and Powers in their article entitled "How the Doctor Got Gagged."¹ The article argues that the right of privacy in the physician-patient relationship is threatened by recent judicial trends manifest in the Supreme Court's Rust v Sullivan² decision, upholding the constitutionality of the Department of Health and Human Service's 1988 regulation for the federal family planning program (Title X of the Public Health Service Act). As the physician who is directly responsible for the family planning program, I strenuously object to this mis-characterization of the program, the regulation, and the role of physicians in the program.

A narrative of the legal development . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
Edited by Drummond Rennie, MD, Deputy Editor (West), and Bruce B. Dan, MD, Senior Editor.

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