Genome-wide association studies in developing countries raise important new ethical issues
Typically conducted in richer, developed countries but now increasingly done in the developing world, genome wide association (GWA) studies raise a host of ethical issues that must be addressed, argues a Policy Forum article published this week in PLoS Medicine. Among the most pressing ethical issues is the release of data, says Michael Parker of the University of Oxford and his colleagues, who highlight the importance of developing policies and procedures for data release appropriate to GWA studies in developing countries. To highlight the practical ethical issues, they describe the development of a GWA data-release policy for the Malaria Genomic Epidemiology Network (MalariaGEN), a partnership of malaria researchers in over 20 countries supported by the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative...