One of the ethical difficulties that confront biobank and genomics research concerns the communication of results to participants.

Should biobank participants be given feedback from research? If so, under what conditions?

A recent article in the European Journal of Human Genetics reports a survey of Dutch biobank researchers’ opinions on the issue.

Here are some findings that struck me:

  1. Most of the respondents held the view that participants have to be informed about findings that are relevant at a group level.
  2. There was less agreement, however, about communication of findings that can be relevant for specific individual participants.
  3. About half of the Dutch biobank investigators found it acceptable to not communicate individual results about genetic variation.
  4. Most of the researchers (74%) answered that participants have to be informed about individual results only if there are implications for treatment or prevention.
  5. The respondents generally agreed that participants should not be informed about individual results in return for their contribution. If results are communicated, then, it is not because participation merits rights to individual feedback.
  6. Some worries among respondents concerning communication of individual results were: personal privacy will be harmed (36%); a therapeutic relation will arise (46%); participants’ insurance premiums might increase (66%); information about individual gene variation can frighten participants (81%).

What I find even more interesting, perhaps, is that the researchers’ opinions (in this study) differ from those of the general public and patients (in a comparable study).

When asked similar questions, the general public and patients want individual feedback regardless of the possibility of prevention or treatment… although they seem to change their minds after they have been recruited by biobanks as participants.

As participants, they are less interested in individual feedback than before recruitment.

This change of opinion among participants in the direction of the researchers’ opinions is fascinating. I cannot resist speculating about its cause. Is there such a thing as a “shared experience” of biobanking that shapes expectations and evaluations?

Nevertheless, according to the authors, the gap between the groups is sufficiently wide to complicate the question of how to communicate results to participants.

Pär Segerdahl

ethics needs empirical input - the ethics blog

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