Human Microbiome Research and the Social Fabric

Learning more about the human microbiome is likely to change the way medicine is practiced. It may also have implications for our society and our legal system and important implications for how we conceive and address the ethics of medicine and biomedical research. The goal of our project will, therefore, be identifying the ethical, social, and legal implication raised by the study of the human microbiome so as to provide insight and guidance for scientists who will be engaged in the work and members of our society who will be asked to cooperate in the studies and to live with the consequences. Our project will bring together an interdisciplinary team of 27 health professionals, scientists, and scholars from the humanities and social sciences to explore key issues through an intense process of mutual education, group discussion, consensus formation, writing, critiquing, and confirming our views. With that background we will go on to engage a broader community in a series of discussions of the topics. This series of Community Conversations on Developing Science will be designed to provide skill-based education to our audience, to engage participants in a dialogue about the issues, and to elicit their views in a process that could be called "community consultation." Combining what we learn from our group's research and discussions with the input that we gather from community consultation, we will prepare a volume for publication on the ethical, legal and social implications of the human microbiome and a set of materials to be used by others to inform scientists and our society about these matters. The working hypothesis of our project is that the human microbiome may or may not raise entirely unique issues, but that considering theoretical issues from the vantage point of the human microbiome will allow us to reexamine policies and positions in a new light. We will be trying to locate our understanding of the microbiome within the existing rich and intricately textured social fabric by identifying relevant models and points of comparison for grounding our responses. Seeing issues from the new vantage point of research on the human microbiome will spur us to ask and answer questions about the conceptual foundation of accepted principles and distinctions, about the relative importance of previously accepted commitments, and about how they fit within the warp and weft of two broadly shared values: individual liberty and the social good. We envision several distinct ethical, legal, and social domains in which research on the human microbiome is likely to have significant implications: human subject research; sample banking and biobanking; public health; privacy; property and commercialization; personhood, personal identity, and normalcy. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The human microbiome is a factor in many diseases. Learning more about it through sample banking and translational research is likely advance healthcare through personalized medicine and to have an impact on public health by improving our capability in disease prevention, surveillance and tracking. Research on the human microbiome will also have repercussions for our society and our legal system and important implications for how we conceive and address the ethics of medicine and biomedical research. (HMP RFA)