ABSTRACT
The current rapid emergence of large biobanks-major collections of biological, genetic, environmental and health data-has raised some fascinating issues at the nexus of medical law and medical ethics. The Icelandic project entailed creating a population-wide database and linking this to both a genealogical register and to genetic and other information gained from blood samples. The whole rationale of the biobank enterprise means that those enrolling cannot be told precisely what uses will be made of the resource in the future. The Swedish Biobank, referred to above, gained its participants from a clinic setting, in which there were obvious advantages to the people attending, because they were getting a full health check. The only physical risk relates to taking a blood sample, and consent procedures for this are well established. Psychological risks may be of two kinds: unwanted information and research uses, which offend the moral views of some participants.
