A doctor has submitted an account of how his daughter falsely accused him of having abused her as a child. His daughter is another British doctor. We would like to publish the account as part of a package of articles on false memory syndrome. The questions we are considering are: (1) Can it ever be right to publish something that describes the intimacies of a family conflict, to illustrate a subject? (2) Do we need the daughter’s consent even if we are going to publish the paper anonymously? (3) Should we give the daughter a right of response? (4) Should we go ahead and publish the paper even if the daughter refuses to give her consent and declines to respond?
The father did not want to try to get consent from his daughter. Nothing was published.