Author: Christine Aicardi
Publisher: National Library of Medicine
Publication Year: 2016
Summary: The following article talks about the World Medical Association (WMA) draft on Ethical Considerations Regarding Health Databases and Biobanks. The draft Declaration indeed stresses the importance of respecting these rights, manifested, as it is commonly the case, in the duty to obtain the participant’s consent to have their identifiable information included in a health database or their biological material deposited in a biobank. The draft Declaration calls for a “dedicated independent ethics committee” to approve the establishment of health databases and biobanks (Article 20) as well as to approve all use of data and human material and decide on the type of consent necessary, taking into consideration risks and benefits of the activity. The draft WMA Declaration’s emphasis on rights (e.g. to privacy) to the detriment of duties (e.g. to communicate actionable findings that impact on the health of others) may push to the background other important moral and ethical concerns that arise in the context of data-rich biomedical research.
