We regularly tell strangers about sensitive aspects of our lives. We do it every time we visit the doctor. We do it without hesitating, in spite of the fact that the information won’t stay with the doctor to whom we give it.

The information is archived and will be read by health care staff in the future, when we visit a hospital again. As patients, we are satisfied with this state of affairs. Typically, we are happy that our samples are saved for future use, and that research is being done on our data to improve the quality of the care.

It is obvious to us that these actions are taken for our sake as patients, or as future patients.

However, when the same kind of data is collected for similar overall purposes, but outside of the health care sector, in the construction of biobanks and registers for future medical research, it suddenly becomes more tempting to worry about the safety of our data.

In spite of the fact that the researchers’ information about us

  1. normally is less comprehensive than in the doctor’s journal,
  2. is coded so that the connection to us is as safe as in a bank vault,
  3. isn’t used to do research on us individually, but to explore human patterns of disease,

a tendency to imagine nightmarish scenarios of surveillance appears. – Why?

One reason could be an assumption that researchers only want to answer their own questions. They don’t do research for our sake. They are curious and need our support to realize their own research goals.

Another reason could be an assumption that if medical research has commendable purposes related to health and health care, these purposes are very general and societal: Improved Public Health; Decreased Health Care Costs; A Flourishing Pharmaceutical Sector etc.

Who cares about little me?

When I visit the doctor, the connection to my own health and care is obvious. When I donate blood to the biobank for future research, on the other hand, the connection to me as a patient, or as a future patient, is less obvious.

Still, today’s health care depends on yesterday’s research.

The information I give the doctor would not help me a bit as a patient, if millions had not already provided medical research with their data. My doctor wouldn’t even be able to suggest a diagnosis, or recommend an effective treatment.

I believe we need to defuse the issue of personal data in biobanks and research registers; calm down our tendency to think that the information is collected without regard to us, and for wholly different purposes than in health care. Even in research, our data are collected for our sake: so that we, the day we visit the hospital and tell the doctor about our troubles, can expect well-founded diagnoses and effective treatments.

If you want to reflect more about our interest as future patients that there is ongoing biobank and register research, I want to recommend a coming dissertation:

  • Biobank Research – Individual Rights and Public Benefit

Author is Joanna Stjernschantz Forsberg at CRB, who defends her dissertation the 6th of October in Uppsala.

I also want to recommend the interactive conference, HandsOn: Biobanks, in Uppsala 20-21 September, which tries to illuminate the values of biobanking. You can register for the conference until the 11th of September.

Pär Segerdahl

We challenge habits of thought : the Ethics Blog