The UK Government has announced its plans for a 'biobank' consisting of genetic and personal information.  This idea has been embraced with enthusiasm - as holding the potential to solve many medical - and social - problems.  But the biobank also raises its own unanwerable questions: about the protection of privacy, the dangers of discrimination, the misuse of information by the insurance and employment sectors; the dangers of genetic determinism and the fears of past links between genetics and eugenics.

There are also more specific questions: about the quality of the science, in terms of the data to be gathered (in particular the life style data), its use and the (disproportionate?) amount of money being invested.  

Speakers include Kári Stefánsson, founder and CEO of deCODE genetics in Reyjavik (a company which is exploiting the full range of Iceland's tissue and genetic bank resources in order to develop drugs with Roche) Caroline Dryden, senior researcher at Gene Watch; Sandra Thomas, Director of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, senior fellow at the Science Policy and Technology Research Unit, Sussex University, and author of numerous publications on the development of public policy for biotechnology; Tom Meade who chairs the joint MRC/Wellcome Trust working group which is developing the plans for the 'bank'; and Paul Martin, research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Biorisks and Society at Nottingham University and co-author of a Wellcome Trust report on the issues raised by the development of genetic databases in the UK.  In the chair is Shereen El Feki, healthcare correspondent at The Economist.

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