California Stem Cell Agency on Lacks: Informed Consent Cannot Remove All Questions

(Photo and caption from the stem cell agency blog item this morning.)
The $3 billion California stem cell
agency today weighed in on the Henrietta Lacks-NIH arrangement
restricting the use of her cell lines in research.
Writing on the agency's blog, Geoff
Lomax
, the agency's senior officer for its standards group, noted
that the DNA sequence of her cell line was published without the
knowledge of her descendants. Lomax said,

“The family was understandably upset
by the lack of consultation and in response the research team removed
the genome data from public access.”

Lomax continued,

“CIRM has benefited from these
efforts. We are currently supporting an initiative to collect tissue
samples from thousands of people with a range of incurable diseases
and create reprogrammed iPS cells from those tissues (here's
more about that initiative
). These cells will be a resource for
scientists worldwide working to understand and treat diseases. Part
of this initiative includes a consent process to make sure people who
donate fully understand how their cells will be used. (This process
is formally called informed consent.) 

“The informed
consent process includes a form that identifies the purposes of the
research and describes the way cells will be used. We are also
developing education materials that will help potential donors
quickly and easily understand the basic aspects of research that will
be conducted with those cells. The end result of this collaboration
with our grantees will be a process that is truly informative to
donors.

“The informed consent process can’t entirely
eliminate all future questions on the part of the donor, but it does
ensure that donors have a chance to understand how their cells will
be used and what information will be made public—something
Henrietta Lacks and her family never had.”  

Source:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/uqpFc/~3/8PQGYcYpszg/california-stem-cell-agency-on-lacks.html

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