Constructing populations in biobanking.

Aaro Tupasela,Jose A Cañada,Karoliina Snell

doi:10.1186/s40504-015-0024-0

Abstract

This article poses the question of whether biobanking practices and standards are giving rise to the construction of populations from which various biobanking initiatives increasingly draw on for legitimacy? We argue that although recent biobanking policies encourage various forms of engagement with publics to ensure legitimacy, different biobanks conceptualize their engagement strategies very differently. We suggest that biobanks undertake a broad range of different strategies with regard to engagement. We argue that these different approaches to engagement strategies are contributing to the construction of populations, whereby specific nationalities, communities, societies, patient groups and political systems become imbued or bio-objectified with particular characteristics, such as compliant, distant, positive, commercialized or authoritarian. This bio-objectification process is problematic in relation to policy aspirations ascribed to biobanking engagement since it gives rise to reified notions of different populations.

Highlights

The success of any research project has a direct relation with the trust of participants that will voluntarily accept to provide samples and, usually, private information about their health and living habits
We argue in this paper that these different approaches to engagement strategies are giving rise to the construction of populations, whereby specific nationalities, populations, patient groups and political systems become imbued with particular characteristics, such as deliberative, consensus seeking, commercialized or authoritarian
In our research of biobank engagement strategies in six countries we have made a note of the different ways in which various biobanks, as well as biobanking policies, have sought to construct or bio-objectify the populations from which they source their samples

Summary

Introduction

The success of any research project has a direct relation with the trust of participants that will voluntarily accept to provide samples and, usually, private information about their health and living habits. We argue that these different approaches to engagement strategies are contributing to the construction of populations, whereby specific nationalities, communities, societies, patient groups and political systems become imbued or bio-objectified with particular characteristics, such as compliant, distant, positive, commercialized or authoritarian.

Results

Conclusion