Withdrawal of consent for processing personal data in biomedical research

Withdrawal of consent for processing personal data in biomedical research
Marcu Florea
International Data Privacy Law, 15 June 2023
Open Access
Excerpt
In the context of biomedical research, consent is both a ground for the lawful processing of personal data and a bioethical requirement for participation in scientific research projects. While the conditions for obtaining valid consent are extensively discussed in legal and bioethical literature, withdrawal of consent has received considerably less attention. According to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that data subjects have the right to withdraw their consent at any time, but the duties of the entities processing personal data are not clearly defined in the text of the Regulation. Pursuant to Article 7 GDPR, withdrawal ‘shall not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal’, but there is no clear specification of the rules governing what happens after this moment…