Ethics for life sciences engineers

The principle of Autonomy is that researchers and scientists have a duty to respect the ability of the patient or research participant to make their own informed decisions.  In research projects this is typically taken to imply (a) a need for informed consent and (b) an obligation to protect the privacy of patients or research participants.  But, in a world where scientific jargon is often impenetrable to non-experts, what does informed consent mean, in practice?  And what about vulnerable populations, who many not feel able to withhold consent?

Since Autonomy must be balanced with other principles, there may be times when ‘consent’ is not reasonable if this restriction may cause harm to others – this is relevant in the case of HeLa cells, used without consent in the development of medicines and in research.  Life science researchers are also faced with multiple threats to privacy – whether through problems of data security, through the power of big data analysis tools to make identifying deductions about people, or through the capacity to extrapolate from the genetic material of one individual to that person’s relatives. 

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