Genetic relatedness poses significant challenges to traditional practices of medical ethics as concerns the biobanking of human biological samples. In this paper, we first outline the ethical challenges to informed consent and confidentiality as these apply to human biobanks, irrespective of the type of tissue being stored. We argue that the shared nature of genetic information has clear implications for informed consent, and the identifying nature of biological samples and information has clear implications for promises of confidentiality. Next, with regard (...) to the special case of biobanking human embryos and eggs, we consider issues arising from: first, the type of tissues being stored; second, the use to which these tissues are put; and third, how this plays out given the shared and identifying nature of these tissues. Specifically, we examine the differences between human bodily tissues and human reproductive tissues focusing on the assumed potential of the reproductive tissues and on the possible greater emotional attachment to these tissues because of their real and imagined kinship. For some donors there may be a sense of family connection with embryos and eggs they once thought of as ‘children-in-waiting’. Finally, we conclude by considering the implications for ethical practice. (shrink)

This paper argues that a certain way of thinking about the function of the biobank—about what it does and is constructed for as a social institution aimed at ‘some good’—can and should play a substantial role in an effective biobanking ethic. It first exemplifies an ‘institution shaped gap’ in the current field of biobanking ethics. Next the biobank is conceptualized as a social institution that is apt for a certain kind of purposive functional definition such that we know it by (...) what it does and what it is designed to do. This purpose is then characterized further as essentially incorporating the human goods the institution is designed to serve, such that it plays a useful and indispensible role in how it should operate, i.e. in the ethics and governance of biobanking. Finally the ethical scope and limitations of such a theory is clarified by a discussion of some theoretical objections and suggested practical examples of its application. (shrink)