Becoming partners, retaining autonomy: ethical considerations on the development of precision medicine.
Precision medicine promises to develop diagnoses and treatments that take individual variability into account. According to most specialists, turning this promise into reality will require adapting the established framework of clinical research ethics, and paying more attention to participants' attitudes towards sharing genotypic, phenotypic, lifestyle data and health records, and ultimately to their desire to be engaged as active partners in medical research.Notions such as participation, engagement and partnership have been introduced in bioethics debates concerning genetics and large-scale biobanking to broaden the focus of discussion beyond individual choice and individuals' moral interests. The uptake of those concepts in precision medicine is to be welcomed. However, as data and medical information from research participants in precision medicine cohorts will be collected on an individual basis, translating a participatory approach in this emerging area may prove cumbersome. Therefore, drawing on Joseph Raz's perfectionism, we propose a principle of respect for autonomous agents that, we reckon, can address many of the concerns driving recent scholarship on partnership and public participation, while avoiding some of the limitations these concept have in the context of precision medicine. Our approach offers a normative clarification to how becoming partners in precision is compatible with retaining autonomy.Realigning the value of autonomy with ideals of direct engagement, we show, can provide adequate normative orientation to precision medicine; it can do justice to the idea of moral pluralism by stressing the value of moral self-determination: and, finally, it can reconcile the notion of autonomy with other more communitarian values such as participation and solidarity.
Health Ethics and Policy Lab, University of Zurich, 84 Hirshengraben, 8001, Zurich, Switzerland. alessandro.blasimme@uzh.ch.|U1027 Inserm - Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France. alessandro.blasimme@uzh.ch.
Alessandro
A
Blasimme
Health Ethics and Policy Lab, University of Zurich, 84 Hirshengraben, 8001, Zurich, Switzerland.
Effy
E
Vayena
D001294:Attitude to Health; D026688:Bioethical Issues; D001675:Bioethics; D018070:Biological Specimen Banks; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000941:ethics*; D003256:Community Participation; D016208:Databases, Factual; D028663:Ethical Theory; D032984:Ethics, Research; D006801:Humans; D008499:Medical Records; D009014:Morals; D010358:Patient Participation; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D010684:Philosophy; D057285:Precision Medicine / Q000941:ethics*; D012941:Social Responsibility; D012945:Social Values
Autonomy; Ethics; Participation; Personalized medicine; Precision medicine