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260: RELIABILITY OF
MEDICAL TESTING
IN DETERMINING
PAT E R N I T Y

ɳ Question

While examining a patient it became clear to me that the patient is
not able to sire children. In consequence, it is clear that his children –
whom he believes to be his children – are not his. My questions are:

1. Do I have an obligation to reveal this to the patient in order to get
him to separate from his wife?

2. Do I have an obligation to reveal to these children’s prospective
spouses that the people they are planning to marry are mamzerim?

This question can also arise when a physician is testing blood sam-
ples of parents and children, and the test shows that the child’s blood
is not identical to that of either of the parents, in which case it is clear
that the child was born from another man. Does the physician have
an obligation to inform the father – and when the time comes, the
child’s fiancée – of this?

Dr. M.A.B. Herzl, Governmental
Hospital…

ɳ Response

The gemara in maseches Bava Basra (58a) relates that a woman re-

106 1 Medical-Halachic Responsa of Rav Zilberstein