Informed consent · Biobanks
Biobank consent is broken in one specific way, and the two proposed fixes contradict each other
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Short answer
Broad consent deepened at the point of decision and dynamic consent maintained over time are competing answers to biobank reuse, resting on different accounts of what consent protects.
What happened
Two normative proposals address the same failure. Steinsbekk and colleagues argue broad consent is the right instrument for biobanks provided it is also deep — that protection of participants, not administrative convenience, is the test a consent model must pass. Kaye and colleagues argue for Dynamic Consent: interactive platforms that maintain communication with participants over time as research programmes change, rather than resolving everything at enrolment.
Why it matters
The disagreement is not procedural. Deep broad consent treats consent as an informed authorisation that can be made well once; dynamic consent treats it as a relationship that has to be maintained. Which failure mode you consider worse — an uninformed authorisation, or a participant who has lost track of what they joined — determines which fix looks right, and no amount of implementation detail settles it.
Evidence
- Study type
- Competing normative proposals in biobank research ethics
- Sample
- Conceptual arguments; neither proposal is accompanied by an empirical trial here
- Journal
- BMC Medical Ethics · peer reviewed
- Replication
- The disagreement is live in the literature and is not resolvable by replication, since the dispute is about what consent is for
- Limitations
- Neither paper measures participant understanding, recruitment or withdrawal under its model. Broad-consent definitions vary across jurisdictions, which makes empirical comparison harder still.
What this connects to
Sources
The 2 studies this explanation is built from, by the role each plays. Every source links to PaperFren’s explanation of it and to the original paper.
Primary study
- Is broad biobank consent good enough?
Study-specific consent looks strict but fits biobanks poorly; a modified broad consent that is also ‘deep’ best protects participants on the authors’ criteria-based model.
What it does not showLimitations
This is a normative model paper, not a biobank RCT. It does not measure how ‘deep’ any existing form is.
PaperFren explanationStudy with cards and a quizOriginal paper (DOI)cc by
Conflicting evidence
Asks the same question and reaches a different answer.
- Can consent stay alive after enrolment?
Dynamic Consent is a personalised online platform for consent and communication so participants can be invited, updated, and followed as research uses change.
What it does not showLimitations
This is a conceptual proposal, not an RCT of a consent app. It does not prove recruitment will rise.
PaperFren explanationStudy with cards and a quizOriginal paper (DOI)cc by
Before
Specific consent was the intuitive default, tied to a defined study whose aims the participant could be told at enrolment — which biobank reuse makes impossible in principle.
Now
Two developed alternatives exist and pull in opposite directions. Both are normative proposals rather than trials: neither has been shown to produce better-informed participants, and dynamic consent has not been shown to raise recruitment.