Reply to comment

 To add to the list of times when science has failed to inform individuals of their involvement in scientific advances, I am currently reading The Seven Daughters of Eve for my bio lab this quarter. It is a nonfiction book about the author's exploration of race and the tracing of mitochondrial DNA back to seven women who lived approximately 150,000 years ago. The author, Sykes, writes that on a visit to Polynesia he explained to a hospital that he is a geneticist and convinced them to give him 35 blood samples left over from blood-sugar tests. He then used these samples to examine mitochondrial DNA in order to see if he could determine the geographical origin of the Polynesians. So here, 35 people went to a hospital, gave blood samples for SUGAR tests, and then ended up leaving the country and the results of these blood samples are now published and explained in a national bestselling book. And those 35 people will probably never know about that, and they never gave consent for that to happen. Just something to think about...