Informed Consent and the Bio-banking of Material from Children

This paper considers the ethical issues raised by biobanking of material from children who are not mature enough to give ethically valid consent. The first part considers consent requirements for entry of such materials in the biobank, whereas the second part looks at the issues that arise when a competent child later wants to withdraw previously stored materials, and at the issues that arise when there is informational entanglement between information about a parent and information about a child.