WP5 - Governance
Workpackage Leader: Herbert Gottweis (University of Wien)
The plan of this WP is to proactively contribute to the social, ethical, scientific-technological, and political-regulatory subject matters, and to help the understanding of the ethical, socio-economic, scientific-technological and political implications of biobank development on the local and the national level, and in the transnational field. Based on the careful empirical examination of already existing biobank projects in a number of countries and on the transnational level, we will identify specific socio-cultural and economic challenges for the building of this project with the goal helping the crafting of its overall strategy and development.
In this WP, we plan to integrate knowledge derived from fieldwork at three individual biobanking initiatives [‘Genome Austria Tissue Bank’ (GAtiB), ‘UK Biobank’, ‘Biobank Japan’] into a broader framework of biobank- networking activities, which we will build up upon experiences from two different cases in the field: 'Public Population Project in Genomics' (P3G) and 'Eurobiobank' (EBB).
In each of the cases we will survey the general national, and in the case of P3G transnational, approach towards biobanks against the background of health policy and cultural, historical, political, and legal specificities, the local biobank situation. A particular focus will be on the study of patterns of conflict and controversy related to biobanking, and the study of procedures to solve conflict caused by differing bioethical concepts and opinions. Our aim is exploring the reasons why the development of biobanks has in some cases slowed down or even collapsed and has been in other cases successful. Our research methodology builds up on qualitative semi-structured interviewing and qualitative data analysis. Furthermore, we apply a case by case approach, in order to explain the particular from the biobank's operator own point of view.
