Instead, physicians should not routinely ask patients whether they own guns, because it could compromise the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship.

FORBES: Why Doctors Should Not Ask Their Patients About Guns

It entails a different approach to life, death, health and illness, and a different view of the doctor-patient relationship, of health services and of risk factors.

UNESCO: Social and Human Sciences

Anyone who has actually done real psychotherapy, in which people really pour out their souls (in my 20s, I practiced psychiatry), knows how dangerous, delicate and often destructive such an exercise can be -- even in the privacy, confidentiality and highly ritualized setting of the doctor-patient relationship.

CNN: Viewpoint: Not Enough Conversation?

The difficulty is that they have a duty of patient confidentiality which is central to the success of the doctor-patient relationship and means that patients feel able to confide honestly with their GP.

BBC: Gun concerns: Why doctors should not always speak out

Doctors may be uncomfortable knowing about the extra-marital activities of their patients, but confidentiality is a key part of the doctor-patient relationship and is essential in ensuring that the public's trust in doctors will be maintained.

BBC: When do you break a patient's confidence?

Injecting so much uncertain genetic information into the doctor-patient relationship could create legions of "patients in waiting" leading to unnecessary tests, harmful outcomes and lifelong anxiety.

WSJ: Should Healthy People Have Their Genomes Sequenced?

Palmieri, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital who wrote a 2009 article "Lies in the Doctor-Patient Relationship" that appeared in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

WSJ: When Patients Lie to the Doctor

The package seized by authorities under a July 23 search warrant should remain confidential, protected by the doctor-patient relationship because "Holmes was a psychiatric patient of Fenton, " the request said.

CNN: Colorado movie shooting suspect charged with murder