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Health Care Analysis
Published in: Health Care Analysis 3/2011

01-09-2011 | Original Article

The Biobank as an Ethical Subject

Author: Sean Cordell

Published in: Health Care Analysis | Issue 3/2011

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Abstract

This paper argues that a certain way of thinking about the function of the biobank—about what it does and is constructed for as a social institution aimed at ‘some good’—can and should play a substantial role in an effective biobanking ethic. It first exemplifies an ‘institution shaped gap’ in the current field of biobanking ethics. Next the biobank is conceptualized as a social institution that is apt for a certain kind of purposive functional definition such that we know it by what it does and what it is designed to do. This purpose is then characterized further as essentially incorporating the human goods the institution is designed to serve, such that it plays a useful and indispensible role in how it should operate, i.e. in the ethics and governance of biobanking. Finally the ethical scope and limitations of such a theory is clarified by a discussion of some theoretical objections and suggested practical examples of its application.
Footnotes
1
The opening sentence of this paragraph may strike the reader as either a startling or a mundane one, depending on for example whether they think that there can be autonomous sub-disciplines of applied ethics or, by contrast, that ethical inquiry into any topic necessarily involves something of a similarly wide scope. I remain neutral on this issue, and concentrate on the claim that the debates within this scope could be more fruitful with the inclusion of a previously neglected subject, namely the biobanking institution understood in a certain way which I go on to outline.
 
2
See also for example Mairi Levitt’s discussion, in this issue, of the appeal to national pride or solidarity in recruiting individuals in the case of Generation Scotland.
 
3
This is not of course to deny that there are thoroughly bad institutions, such as criminal gangs or despotic regimes (see note 4 below).
 
4
Of course not all social institutions are good ones. Cautiously however, I would suggest that even in cases of straightforwardly evil and socially destructive institutions, there is always some person or group of persons who get, or think they get, some good for them from the formation and sustenance of a social institution. Any credible explanation of why the institution of slavery endured as long as it did, for example, would seem at least to accommodate this explanation. Furthermore, the human goods conception of purposive function under discussion can be crucial to identifying who is getting which ‘goods’ from such evil in which ways. For the reasons the beneficiaries sustain the institution can be crucial also in establishing that such institutions are evil and the reasons they should be dismantled or modified.
 
5
My thanks to Søren Holm for this example.
 
Literature
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Aristotle (1998). Politics (E. Barker, Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2.
Elger, B. (2010). Ethical issues of human genetic databases. UK: Ashgate.
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Foot P. (1978). Virtues and vices, and other essays in moral philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell.
4.
Geach P. (1967). Good and evil. In P. Foot (Ed.), Theories of ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Gibbons, S. (2007). Are UK genetic databases governed adequately? A comparative legal analysis. Legal Studies, 27, 312–342.CrossRef
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Hannson, M. G., Dillner, J., Bartram, C. R., Carlson, J. A., & Helgesson, G. (2006). Should donors be allowed to give broad consent to future biobank research? Lancet Oncology, 7, 266–269.
7.
Hunter, K. G., & Laurie, G. (2009). Involving publics in biobank governance: Moving beyond existing approaches. In H. Widdows & C. Mullen (Eds.), The governance of genetic information: Who decides? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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MacIntyre, A. (1973). The essential contestability of some social concepts. Ethics, 84, 1–9.CrossRef
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Maschke, K. J. (2006). Alternative consent approaches for biobank research. The lancet Oncology, 7, 193–194.PubMedCrossRef
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Oakley, J., & Cocking, D. (2002). Virtue ethics and professional roles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Rothstein, M. A. (2005). Expanding the ethical analysis of biobanks. Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, 33, 89–101.CrossRef
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Sándor, J., & Bárd, P. (2009). The legal regulation of biobanks national report: Hungary. Budapest: Center for Ethics and Law in Biomedicine (CELAB).
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Skolbekken, J., Ursin, L., Solberg, B., Christensen, E., & Borgunn, Y. (2005). Not worth the paper it’s written on? Informed consent and biobank research in a Norwegian context. Critical Public Health, 15, 335–347.CrossRef
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Widdows, H., & Cordell, S. (2010). Constructing effective ethical frameworks for biobanking. Dilemata: International Journal of Applied Ethics, 4, 15–31.
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Metadata
Title
The Biobank as an Ethical Subject
Author
Sean Cordell
Publication date
01-09-2011
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Health Care Analysis / Issue 3/2011
Print ISSN: 1065-3058
Electronic ISSN: 1573-3394
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10728-011-0180-1

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