Ignorance is bliss. But when it comes to your health, is it also a right?

Tell kids the Tooth Fairy is fake, and their lips are sure to tremble. Reveal the list of their birthday gifts the day before the party, and they may well despair.

Those who don’t want to hear such things can try covering their ears with a ‘la-la-la-not-listening,’ but the blabbers, in most cases, aren’t violating anyone’s rights. But what about a nurse who blurts the gender of a baby to parents who didn’t want to know? Or adoptive parents who tell kids their birth origins even though it may mess the kids up? And how about terminally ill patients who would feel hopeless if they knew they were dying?

Ethicists in the ‘80s first applied the right to not know something to people with genetic ‘scary stories’. If I’m a diabetic-in-waiting or future life-long-inpatient, they argue, I should be allowed to be blissfully blind.