Becoming and being a biobank donor: The role of relationships and ethics

Abstract

Relational aspects, such as involvement of donor’s relatives or friends in the decision-making on participation in a research biobank, providing relatives’ health data to researchers, or sharing research findings with relatives should be considered when reflecting on ethical aspects of research biobanks. The aim of this paper is to explore what the role of donor’s relatives and friends is in the process of becoming and being a biobank donor and which ethical issues arise in this context. We performed qualitative analysis of 40 qualitative semi-structured interviews with biobank donors and researchers. The results show that relatedness to relatives or other types of close relationships played a significant role in the donors’ motivation to be involved in a biobank, risk-benefit assessment, and decisions on sharing information on research and its results. Interviewees mentioned ethical issues in the context of sharing relatives’ health-related data for research purposes and returning research findings that may affect their relatives. We conclude that the question of what information on family members may be shared with a biobank by research participants without informed consent of those relatives, and when family members become research subjects, lacks a clear answer and detailed guidelines, especially in the context of the introduction of the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation. Researchers in Latvia and EU face ethical questions and dilemmas about returning research results and incidental findings to donors’ relatives, and donors need more information on sharing research results with relatives in the informed consent process.

Monitoring Attitudes towards Research Biobanking in Central and Eastern Europe: An Alarming Absence of Data

“…In addition to the distrust of biobanks and scientists and awareness examined so far, reluctance to donate biological samples may be conditioned by various concerns that are somewhat related to low transparency, sharing of sensitive data, and loss of control over sample use, which are part of informed consent (Dive et al, 2020;Mezinska et al, 2020b;Ursin et al, 2020). However, the causes may be more psychological, such as laypeople's theories and (mis)conceptions, which are still understudied within CEE.…”

“…Thus, understanding laypersons' involvement in research biobanking enterprises is crucial (Porteri et al, 2014). Despite its undoubtful benefits, biobanking is associated with several ethical issues, e.g., privacy protection and informed consent (Goisauf et al, 2019;Bromley & Khodyakov, 2021) and (un)willingness to donate biological samples and share personal data (Domaradzki & Pawlikowski, 2019;Mezinska et al, 2020b), which could shape public engagement in biobanking. For the concept of biobanking to be successful, it is important to know the public attitudes towards the service, motives, and barriers of potential donors to engage in biobanking.…”