An NIH-funded, blue-ribbon project group has just published the first consensus recommendations on a question that has vexed researchers for serveral years: Should researchers share an individual study participant’s private results with family members who may share a genetic risk? A new special issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics grapples with these real-world dilemmas and presents recommendations to guide researchers confronted with them. The symposium is an outgrowth of a multi-year National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded grant and was edited by the grant's principal investigators: Susan M. Wolf, JD, University of Minnesota; Barbara A. Koenig, PhD, RN, University of California, San Francisco; and Gloria M. Petersen, PhD, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. Prof. Wolf says, “What makes these issues so challenging is current bioethics, law, and research rules focus on protecting individuals, but genetics is about families.” The guidelines are the beginning of an important, national policy conversation, one that will have a major impact on the future of genomics in U.S. health care. View a PDF of the consensus recommendations here.