Bioethics Beyond Altruism Donating and Transforming Human Biological Materials

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some of his tissue. John Moore sought a share of any profits that were
created from a cell line made from his donated tissues. However, a
court later ruled that John Moore held no property right to his cells
(Waldby and Mitchell 2006 ). Another example from the USA concerns
the Native American tribe the Havasupai, who sued Arizona State
University after researchers took samples from the tribe, which were
donated for diabetes research, and used them without consent to study
mental illness and geographical migration studies (Harmon 2010 ). The
legal battle between the Havasupai and Arizona State University was
settled out of court, but the case highlighted that the rights of research
participants can be violated when they are not fully informed about
how their DNA might be used (Harmon 2010 ). These cases highlight
the fact that research participants have a desire to know how their tis-
sues are used. As was made apparent by the John Moore case, research-
ers should make clear to participants the proprietary rights of their
tissue sample.


Conveying Information


Despite the best efforts of researchers, it has been well established that
patients retain only a small portion of the information and may also
have limited understanding of what they are consenting to during the
ethics and informed consent procedures (Li et al. 2014 ). The standard
method of obtaining informed consent is through verbal or written
consent. However, there is a greater need to ensure participants are ade-
quately informed about innovative technology, such as iPSC research.
Therefore, there is a growing need to explore and experiment with other
ways to provide information and gain the informed consent of research
participants. One method that been explored recently has been the use
of multimedia to assist with gaining informed consent.
Although videos are not a common component of ethics and
informed consent procedures, a number of studies have explored their
use to improve participants’ consent recall. The results of these studies

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