Development and progress of Ireland's biobank network: Ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI), standardized documentation, sample and data release, and international perspective.

Biobank Ireland Trust (BIT) was established in 2004 to promote and develop an Irish biobank network to benefit patients, researchers, industry, and the economy. The network commenced in 2008 with two hospital biobanks and currently consists of biobanks in the four main cancer hospitals in Ireland. The St.

Ireland and medical research with minors: some medico-legal aspects.

The practice of medical research with minors in Ireland consist of practices pertaining to therapeutic and non-therapeutic medical research. Clinical trials (a category of therapeutic research), is governed by legislation. However, any other therapeutic research (non-clinical trials research) and non-therapeutic research, e.

The Data Protection (Amendment) Act, 2003: the Data Protection Directive and its implications for medical research in Ireland.

Directive 95/46/EC on the Protection of Individuals with regard to the Processing of Personal Data and on the Free Movement of Such Data has been transposed into national law and is now the Data Protection (Amendment) Act, 2003. The Directive and the transposing Act provide for new obligations to those processing data. The new obligation of primary concern is the necessity to obtain consent prior to the processing of data (Article 7, Directive 95/46/EC).

Genetic research & human biological samples: some legal and ethical considerations.

This paper examines the medico-legal and medico-ethical issues that ethics committees and researchers will have to consider when examining proposals pertaining to non-therapeutic genetic research. This paper is limited to the examination of issues that relate to those individuals who donate bodily/DNA samples for the purposes of non-therapeutic genetic research. The issues that arise are those of (i) informed consent and those with diminished capacity (ii) the drafting of consent forms as they relate to genetic research (iii) confidentiality, genetic research with non-EU countries and the implications of the EC Directive on the Protection of Data: 95/46/EC and (iv) an examination of international ethical guidelines.

Maternal brain death, pregnancy and the foetus: the medico-legal implications for Ireland.

This paper examines some of the medico-legal issues that arose as a result of a situation which occurred in May 2001 in Ireland when a woman who was a British citizen and who was fourteen weeks pregnant collapsed and suffered a brain haemorrhage. She was taken to hospital where she was placed on life support but declared brain-dead. As a result of the uncertainty regarding the hospital's obligation to the foetus, life-support was maintained until further opinion was sought.