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Author: AMA staff
Publisher: American Medical Association
Year: 2020
Summary: This AMA publication discusses the balancing act between individuals’ well-being and community well-being when it comes to medical data, particularly with epidemics like COVID. It gets into various opinions and laws about this, and there is a general agreement that there are at least some purposes other than clinical care in which patient data can ethically be used. DNA databanks are one source of highly valuable data that also carries sizeable risk for the patients involved – they may be exposed to discrimination, stigmatization, or other harms. Of course, informed consent should be sought whenever patient data is used, but different sources have different opinions on the minutiae of this statement. The article provides references to these for further reading.