Database Research: Public and Private Interests

It is often argued that a major tension in bioethics is between protecting the private interests of individuals on one hand and contributing to the common good on the other. In this article I ask how fitting this description is as regards the interest at stake in relation to the issue of consent to participation in population data collections. I raise some doubts about what I take to be two common positions regarding public and private interests in this context. The first is that restricted individual consent protects private interests at the cost of public interest. © 2011 Cambridge University Press.