Beyond Individual Consent: The Hidden Crisis of Group Harm in the AI and Genomics Era

Beyond Individual Consent: The Hidden Crisis of Group Harm in the AI and Genomics Era
Open Peer Commentaries
Tony Yang
The American Journal of Bioethics, 29 January 2025
Excerpt
…Chapman and colleagues’ analysis highlights critical gaps in current regulatory frameworks, particularly around institutional review board (IRB) assessment of group risks, informed consent requirements, and criteria for consent waivers. Their work connects to and builds upon several themes identified in earlier work: the increasing salience of group risks in data-centric research, as highlighted by analyses of algorithmic harm and bias in big health data research (Obermeyer et al. Citation2019); the challenges of prospectively identifying group harms, emphasized in studies of genetic research with Indigenous communities (Garrison et al. Citation2019); and the limitations of individual-focused protections in addressing collective risks, a theme present across multiple analyses…