A settlement between 41 members of the Havasupai Indian tribe and Arizona State University highlights the risk researchers take when they fail to secure what is known as “informed consent,” fully informing research participants how their DNA may be used, legal experts and civil rights advocates said.
Members of the tiny tribe had given DNA samples to university researchers starting in 1990, hoping they might provide genetic clues to the tribe's high rate of diabetes. But members learned their blood samples also had been used to study many other things, including mental illness and theories of the tribe's geographical origins that contradict their traditional stories.
You can read more in the New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/us/22dnaside.html
My thanks to Jeri Steele for telling me about this story.
