Biobanks – a propable solution

Dies ist eine Englisch-Hausaufgabe die Bezug nimmt auf einen Artikel von Alice Parker, veröffentlicht im Time Magazin.

Alice Parker’s „Biobanks“ deals with the issue of upcoming storage facilities for biological specimens. She describes how America’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) plans to create a biobank where every American could, theoretically, store specimens such as blood, tissue samples or DNA extracts. The purpose of such an institution would be to increase in available research data, which is on a constant low. A gain in knowledge about almost every diseas is prospected and brought forth as one of the best arguments for such a bank. However, Park mentions a great fear of many people that the most private of their personal data might be stolen: their DNA – among with everything it can tell about you.
Biobanks provide an opportunity for science to get access to an amount of research data that surpasses everything achievable by studies. This would give a multitude of opportunities to the resesearchers in the fields of cancer, gene-diagnostics, mutations among humans and almost any other diseas.
Modern scientific advances often rely on small amounts of data which is often gathered directly by the researchers themselves. This costs time and money. If a national biobank was created and filled appropriately, the main focus of researching professionals could shift more to actually analyzing the data rather than having to deal with costly studies. They could rely on a vast amount of data which is accumulated automatically from material that is gathered from all members of society. The advantage would be that more results could be achieved in less time compared to the methods of today.
The validity of scientific results is often a crucial point. Many theories have been postulated, which had been based on a small amount of data, and been found faulty after revalidating them under different conditions. George Mendel could not have stipulated his rules of inheritance had he not performed thousands of crossings over decades. The problem of having just little data coming from parallel backgrounds could be avoided by the menas of biobanks. Data gathered from a whole population is far more conclusive than what medical studies generally render.
In the context of donating material that contains the complete genetic code of an individual, the personal rights of the donors are seen at jeopardy. This is quite understandable, considering what misuse of this kind of data could cause. Life or healtcare insurances would use the data to adjust their fares to the specifics of their clients. Someone with a high statistical chance of developing cancer would then have to pay multiples of what a potentially healthy person would have to pay. This means discrimination based on biological differences – something that is totally inacceptable in today’s society, but would further the cause of large insurance companies. This problem makes high levels of encryption for the donor/data relation necessary.
For scientific purposes, it would be completely irrelevant if the donor of the material could be identified, as long as enough data is present. For medical treatment options, however, the relation to the donor has to be made if, for example, a genetic deficiency is discovered. This leads to the question of the ultimate use of biobanks. While strictly scientific use would make sure that userrights are maintained, the advantages of the medical opportunities are not given. It is a tradeoff and finally, strict laws will have to make sure user data is secure – after all, this works for regular medical information too.
In general, a national biobank with international relations of the data collected is favorable for research purposes. The validity and amount of data that could be provided by such a repository might be crucial for the next great advance in scientific knowledge. Even though donorrights might be endangered by data theft, a tradeoff will have to be made between the amount of information that we put out there about us and the “dividends” that we will be able to gather from the analysis of our genetic code. Cancer researchers crave for the possibility to map the genome of a complete population. Finally, for scientific uses, there would not need to be a donor/data relation, so that after all, user data might be safe and no misuse by insurances could be even possible. In the face of the possibilities that biobanks give to researchers, it will be the right step to give easy access to biological samples on a large scale to further medical research purposes.