Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues of Biobanks, Including Brain Banks: Experiences in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, and Future Perspectives for Global Principles

초록

In the 2024 revision of the Declaration of Helsinki (DoH) by the World Medical Association (WMA) for medical research involving human participants, the Declaration of Taipei (DoT) for health databases and biobanks was referred to for the first time. This will have a significant impact on the secondary use of data and biological materials obtained from research participants. The increased awareness of the DoT will not only impact research but also have an even greater impact on the management and governance of health databases and biobanks worldwide. A further revision process of the DoT started in April 2025. The authors had an opportunity to conduct joint research on the ethical, legal, and social issues of biobanks, especially focusing on brain banks, in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. This chapter describes our findings and proposals for further consideration. Although this is a collection of anecdotal descriptions of each situation in the three countries, it is desired that our findings will contribute to further development of global ethical principles for health databases and biobanks, through the revision process of the DoT, which is now a requisite item of the DoH. © 2025 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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