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Updated: Jul 22, 2026
07:50
Establishment of a Clinic-based Biorepository
Published on: May 29, 2017
The biobank consent debate: Why 'meta-consent' is not the solution?
Journal of Medical Ethics
|October 3, 2018
Summary
A new meta-consent framework for biobank participation, allowing individuals to design their consent, is ethically sound but practically burdensome. Offering this complex choice may not be feasible or ethically necessary.
Area of Science:
- Bioethics
- Biobanking
- Informed Consent
Background:
- The ethics of biobank participation and informed consent models (specific vs. broad) have been debated for decades.
- Thomas Ploug and Søren Holm proposed a meta-consent framework as an alternative, enabling participants to customize consent parameters.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the ethical and practical implications of the proposed meta-consent framework for biobank participation.
- To determine if offering participants the ability to design their consent process is ethically obligatory or practically advisable.
Main Methods:
- Critical analysis of the meta-consent framework proposed by Ploug and Holm.
- Examination of the ethical arguments and practical considerations associated with implementing meta-consent.
Main Results:
- The meta-consent framework does not inherently wrong participants.
- The practical costs and burdens associated with implementing meta-consent are likely underestimated.
- Existing ethical arguments for providing meta-consent are not sound, and failing to offer this choice does not wrong participants.
Conclusions:
- While not ethically problematic, the meta-consent framework presents significant practical challenges that argue against its implementation.
- There is no compelling ethical imperative to offer participants the opportunity to design their own consent process through a meta-consent framework.
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