The biobank consent debate: why 'meta-consent' is still the solution!
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Updated: Aug 18, 2026

Establishment of a Clinic-based Biorepository
Published on: May 29, 2017
1Centre for Applied Ethics and Philosophy of Science, Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University Copenhagen, København S, Denmark.
Abstract:
In a recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Neil Manson sets out to show that the meta-consent model of informed consent is not the solution to perennial debate on the ethics of biobank participation. In this response, we shall argue that (i) Manson's considerations on the costs of a meta-consent model are incomplete and therefore misleading; (ii) his view that a model of broad consent passes a threshold of moral acceptability rests on an analogy that misconstrues how biobank research is actually conducted and (iii) a model of meta-consent is more in tune with the nature of biobank research and enables autonomous choice.
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