My co-author, John Conley (UNC) will be giving an interdisciplinary (their terminology, but perhaps we should say “multidisciplinary”?) seminar sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center for Genomics and Society on October 20. The talk is entitled “The Discourse of DNA: What Subjects Say about Participating in Genetic Biobanks.” Download Seminar Flyer-2009.10.20-1. (opens pdf) From the flyer:
This talk will present results from a qualitative discourse analysis of interviews with people who were invited to contribute DNA samples to the Environmental Polymorphisms Registry. In lengthy, semi-structured interviews, they were asked generally about their decisions to participate or decline. The method of discourse analysis allows the concerns of the subjects to emerge, as opposed to simply eliciting their responses to the a priori concerns of the researchers. A number of the issues that have arisen have been unexpected, including the characterization of "consenting" as a discursive process rather than an event, the treatment of the sample contribution transaction as a kind of trade secret license, and the subjects' folk theories of DNA.
Lounge readers in the triangle area may want to put this one on their calendars. There’s no paper distributed yet, but I just finished looking through John’s slides for the presentation. I’m sure that we’re all predisposed to believe that our co-authors are doing brilliant and important work (even without us) but this really does look especially interesting, raising questions about how we define both “informed” and “consent,” as well as the role of monetary compensation in such decisions.
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