The Havasupai Indians and the Challenge of Informed Consent for Genomic Research
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Amy Harmon, of The New York Times, reports that a long-running dispute between Arizona State University (ASU) and the Havasupai Indians over the allegedly improper research use of DNA from members of the tribe has been settled.
The research began two decades ago, ostensibly to search for a genetic variant that might be contributing to the increasing rate of diabetes in the tribe. The diabetes research proved unfruitful, but the blood donated by the Havasupai tribe members, and the DNA extracted from it, led to a number of follow-on research projects, grants and publications. It was that research – including searching tribe members’ DNA for variants linked to schizophrenia, and inferring the likely ancestral origins of the tribe’s founders – that led to lawsuits, millions in legal fees and, ultimately, the settlement.
Implications of the Havasupai Settlement. Harmon’s article provides a concise background to the dispute, and briefly describes the $700,000 settlement between ASU and the tribe to “remedy the wrong that was done.” Harmon and unnamed “legal experts” suggest that the settlement is significant because “it implied that the rights of research subjects can be violated when they are not fully informed about how their DNA might be used.”
In some respects, this is a trivial conclusion. One of the most important and well-known elements of the Common Rule – the regulatory regime that governs federally-funded human subjects research – is that researchers must seek, and participants provide, informed consent. Participants that are uninformed cannot provide valid consent and, thus, their rights as subjects are violated. In that respect, at least, the Havasupai case tells us nothing new. (I have not seen the settlement, but I doubt that it will (a) be made public or (b) contain an express admission of guilt from ASU, both factors that will limit its relevance to future similar scenarios.)
Re-identification and its Discontents
Last fall, a paper from Homer et al. in PLoS Genetics made waves by demonstrating that it was possible, in principle, to identify an individual’s genomic data within a large dataset of pooled genomic data. Pooled or aggregated genomic data had previously been considered to provide individual research participants with a strong measure of privacy. The paper from Homer et al. produced an immediate reaction from the genomic research community, prompting the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to immediately restrict pooled genomic data (pdf) that had previously been accessible (pdf) to the public. Other institutions including the Wellcome Trust and the Broad Institute quickly followed suit.
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Informed Consent for Pediatric Biobanking
What rules should govern the participation of children in large-scale genomic biobanking research? That’s the question that David Gurwitz, Isabel Fortier, Jeantine E. Lunshof and Bartha Maria Knoppers tackle in a policy forum piece in the current issue of Science.
The Importance of Open Consent
In considering the use of DNA samples and phenotypic data provided by children to biobanks, Gurwitz et al. argue that the traditional notion of confidentiality or anonymity, at least when it comes to genomic data, is an illusory one:
DNA remains unique as a permanent identifier throughout an individual’s life… As sequencing of entire genomes becomes a routine procedure, DNA donors’ privacy can never be completely ensured within biobanks. Individuals can be traced even in very large aggregate data sets spanning thousands of donors. As a consequence, there is no ‘opting out’ from biobanks once DNA sequences have been published and deposited with public databases.
Along with one of the co-authors of the Science piece (Lunshof), I’ve written previously about the inability to promise privacy in the genomic context (pdf). That premise, coupled with the determination that informed consent requires open and complete disclosure of the risks of participation in genomics research, has served as the basis for of the Personal Genome Project’s (PGP) informed consent protocol (pdf):
If you are enrolled in the PGP, your genetic and trait information will not be maintained or made available in a confidential or anonymous fashion. Your genetic and trait information will be made available via a publicly accessible website and database….
