Biobanks and Neo-liberalism: Contrasting the US and UK

Neo-liberalism generously concedes one role to the state: providing capital for capitalists. We have already seen that happen when firms fail, as in the global bank bail-out of 2008. Even in “normal” situations, however, the state is increasingly called on to shoulder the risks of investment, while the firms take the profits.

Creating biobanks—tissue and data repositories which can be sold on to other firms or mined for research—requires capital investment, unless consumers and governments can be persuaded to shoulder the risk. TruGenetics has offered free DNA tests to the first 10,000 customers who will hand over results for research, while 23andMe also offers a $99 test on the condition that the genetic analysis information remains in the firm’s own biobank and that customers provide some additional health data. By June 2011, 23andMe was able to announce that 100,000 customers had stored their genomic data with the firm, giving the company one of the world’s largest genetic databases. Why are major retail genetic companies willing to sell direct-to-consumer tests at an all-stock-must-go knockdown price? It certainly looks as if the test is a loss leader for the potentially lucrative biobank—particularly because of those clauses about the genetic analysis remaining the property of the firms. Kaiser Permanente offers another private model for large-scale recruitment.

An alternative model is for government and/or foundations to provide the initial outlay on biobanks. A central National Institute of Health biobank was one of the demands made on government by the private interests in George Bush’s creation, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, but it was never realized. Without a nationalised health service to recruit donors gratis, which has benefited the UK Biobank, there’s no alternative but to recruit privately, as cheaply as possible. But although UK Biobank has succeeded in meeting its target of 500,000 genomes, it has had to make some concessions such as allowing donors to withdraw their tissue. What can progressives learn from comparison of biobanking in these two countries?