Knowledge of no return--getting and giving information about genetic risk.

New genetic information can provide constructive preventive possibilities for individuals and for society but can also create new dilemmas for them. In consultations dealing with the risk of inheriting cancer, many problems connected with the notion of information exchange come to the surface. Individuals have to deal not only with the information given by the doctor, or how to give information to the doctor, but also with the problem of informing others, close kin with a similar risk potential, or getting information from them. In all these information exchanges concerning risk of cancer, different notions of 'information' are being invoked and used as resources in the talks, implying communicative problems at different levels. Some of these problems are discussed in this article.