Financial relationships are common, and ethical questions rightly emerge about how conflicts of interest compromise investigators’ approaches to research.
AMA J Ethics. 2021; 23(9):E685-691. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.685.
Physicians’ ethical obligations to disclose conflicts of interest to patients and to obtain their informed consent for treatment are particularly critical when proposed treatments are experimental.
Research is often conducted without the knowledge or consent of those whose tissues are banked and poses possible harms to social groups if information about a few members is unscientifically applied to all.
Developing technologies for personalized medicine may be misused to popularize the idea that one can infer a person’s genetic makeup from observer-defined or self-reported assignment to a race or ethnic group.