Page 144 - Human Rights

Faculty of Nursing
Adult care Nursing Department

This right indicates that children have the moral and legal right to the future exercise of autonomy,

which falls within the general category of rights of the child (or another person with reduced

capacity) that must be protected at present to be exercised later in life.

This concept was proposed by Joel Feinberg in 1980 in the sense of rights-in-trust (Feinberg 1980).

In the case of adolescents, the fundamental ethical question lies in the degree of assessed

maturity. Therefore, consent or refusal of treatment must be strictly dependent on the

assessment made in this regard (professional and legal assessment).

However, if any citizen has the right to be informed about a disease, they also have the right not

to be informed about their health.

This indicates that the exercise of autonomy may require contemplating exceptions to express

consent if that is the real will of the patient (Newman 2015).

Knowledge of personal genetic information or serology for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
is a concrete example of this right of not to know.

That is, there may be circumstances in which the physician must refrain from informing the patient

if this is the patient’s express wish (waivers) in accordance with the ethical principle of non-

maleficence. Excessive and/or unwanted information can be clearly harmful to the patient.

Therefore, physicians often provide such information to the family if this is the patient’s wish.

In this way, the right to personal self-determination is respected (Bode and Jones 2017).

However, freedom, autonomy, and self-determination are concepts that are clearly associated
with privacy.

This right is intended to restrict any external intrusion, presupposing, and noninterference in the

intimate sphere of the person, among other circumstances.

133 Academic Year 2025/2026