This article poses the question of whether biobanking practices and standards are giving rise to the construction of populations from which various biobanking initiatives increasingly draw on for legitimacy? We argue that although recent biobanking policies encourage various forms of engagement with publics to ensure legitimacy, different biobanks conceptualize their engagement strategies very differently. We suggest that biobanks undertake a broad range of different strategies with regard to engagement. We argue that these different approaches to engagement strategies are contributing to the construction of populations, whereby specific nationalities, communities, societies, patient groups and political systems become imbued or bio-objectified with particular characteristics, such as compliant, distant, positive, commercialized or authoritarian. This bio-objectification process is problematic in relation to policy aspirations ascribed to biobanking engagement since it gives rise to reified notions of different populations.
Notes
Cites: Scand J Public Health. 2007;35(2):148-5617454918
Cites: Clin Genet. 2005 Oct;68(4):287-30116143014
Cites: Public Underst Sci. 2007 Jan;16(1):63-7817575709
Cites: Public Health Genomics. 2009;12(4):203-1519367089
Cites: J Dev Behav Pediatr. 2009 Aug;30(4):350-6119672162