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.