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Dynamic consent: a royal road to research consent?
Andreas Bruns1, Eva C Winkler2
1Section of Translational Medical Ethics, National Center for Tumor Diseases, Department of Medical Oncology, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany andreas.bruns@med.uni-heidelberg.de.
Dynamic consent, a new approach for biobanks, may not be morally superior to broad consent for respecting participant autonomy. Both methods face challenges in truly informed consent for medical research.
Area of Science:
- Bioethics
- Medical Research Ethics
- Informed Consent
Background:
- The rise of biobanks and data infrastructures challenges traditional informed consent in medical research.
- Study-specific consent is impractical for large-scale data research.
- Broad consent, while facilitating research, is criticized for potentially undermining informed consent.
Purpose of the Study:
- To critically evaluate the moral superiority of dynamic consent over broad consent regarding individual autonomy.
- To examine the information-focused and control-focused arguments for dynamic consent's ethical advantage.
- To assess whether dynamic consent genuinely enhances autonomy and its moral justification.
Main Methods:
- Philosophical analysis of ethical arguments concerning informed consent models.
- Deconstruction of the claims that dynamic consent is morally superior to broad consent.
- Examination of the relationship between consent, autonomy, and specific choice types.
Main Results:
- Neither the information-focused nor the control-focused argument successfully establishes dynamic consent's moral superiority over broad consent.
- The moral justification for acting on all choices enabled by dynamic consent is questionable.
- Dynamic consent's enhancement of individual autonomy is not definitively established.
Conclusions:
- Dynamic consent, despite its potential, does not inherently offer a morally superior framework for informed consent in biobanking compared to broad consent.
- Further ethical scrutiny is needed regarding the implementation and implications of dynamic consent for participant autonomy.
- The ethical landscape of consent for medical research requires nuanced consideration beyond the dichotomy of broad versus dynamic models.
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