Does biobank research imply new ethical challenges?
It has been claimed that biobank research gives rise to new ethical challenges, ‘many of which test our traditional legal concepts, governance provisions and bioethical principles’ (Gibbons and Kaye, 2007, p 204). However, research ethics committees have a rather long experience in balancing interests regarding the collection of sensitive information into databases and the use of genetic information and family history in association with genetic epidemiologic research. It seems to be a well-established and approved practice to select different information and consent procedures for different research protocols (Council of Europe, 1997, Commentary 137 to Article 22; Hansson, 1998), and most countries have national medical registries with sufficient protection of confidentiality, sometimes without the need of individual consent, for example national cancer registries. As Chadwick and Cutter (2007, p 225)have noted: Arguably, since Gregor Mendel’s original experiments with the hereditary
