Biobanks and Ethical Concerns

Authors

  • Mansour Alanazi Family and Geriatric Medicine, Pain Management Consultant; Director of Family Medicine in King Fahd Military Medical Complex, Saudi Arabia
  • Mohammed Alanazi Chief of Curriculum Development in Military School of Allied Health Sciences in Saudi National Guard Health Affairs; Assistant Professor in King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Saudi Arabia

Keywords:

Biobanks, Consent, Altruism, Benefit.

Abstract

This review critically discussed three ethical concerns of biobanks: consent, altruism, and benefit. Informed consent, altruism, and benefit are issues that must be address in an ethical manner in relation to the operation of biobanks. There are four ethical issues relating to informed consent: withdrawing, feedback, type of consent, and confidentiality. Altruism is another ethical concern with biobanks. It is very important to maintain donors' altruism and the trust through active governance of human genetic banks. There has to be some kind of chain of command that follows the path of each individual specimen collected by a donor so that the altruistic intentions of the donor are preserved. In terms of benefit, Biobanks must balance the responsibilities between donor anonymity and commercial interests. There are ways to try to reduce or eliminate some of the ethical considerations surrounding biobanks.

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Published

2017-06-26

How to Cite

Alanazi, M., & Alanazi, M. (2017). Biobanks and Ethical Concerns. International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research (IJSBAR), 34(2), 111–119. Retrieved from https://www.gssrr.org/index.php/JournalOfBasicAndApplied/article/view/7499

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