{"doi":"10.1002/ajmg.a.61891","title":"Maximizing the value of human biospecimens: Lessons from coronavirus and the Seattle flu study","abstract":"Collection and storage of human biospecimens for future uses has become prevalent in clinical care and clinical research. This practice has the potential to help significantly improve health and well-being. For example, research on biospecimens can help researchers to identify genetic variations associated with human diseases and develop new diagnostic tests and targeted treatments for these diseases. This practice also poses an ethical challenge. At the time biospecimens are collected, the future activities for which they might be used are typically unknown. This uncertainty has led to debate over what type of consent should be obtained to store biospecimens and use them in the future (Secretary's Advisory Committee, 2011). Many groups and guidelines endorse “broad” consent (Grady et al., 2015), and this approach has been adopted widely (Simon, L'heureux, Murray, et al., 2011). Broad consent involves soliciting individuals' permission to retain their samples and make them available for a wide range of future research, subject to a few limitations, without further contact to obtain consent for the specific uses. This approach enhances the scientific and social value of human biospecimens over approaches that obtain consent for a narrower range of research (Table 1). For example, obtaining consent for specific types of research can prevent samples from being used in studies involving next-generation DNA sequencing techniques that were not envisioned at the time the original consent was obtained. At the same time, broad consent offers donors greater control and respect compared to blanket consent or using samples without obtaining any consent at all. Granting its value over other extant approaches, the COVID pandemic illustrates a critical limitation of broad consent that has previously gone unrecognized. Obtaining consent to use samples for research only has the potential to limit their availability for important public health purposes, including efforts to track infection rates in the community and to explore genetic host factors that make some people more susceptible to serious disease. The present article explains this concern and argues that, in order to address it, broad consent should be replaced with broadened consent, which goes beyond broad consent to include future public health uses. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers associated with the Seattle Flu Study (SFS) proposed using samples, which had been collected as part of a research study on seasonal influenza transmission, to assess whether community spread of COVID-19 had begun in the United States. Repurposing the samples in this way would have provided public health officials with a critical extra few weeks of warning regarding the pandemic (Chu et al., 2020). During emerging infectious disease threats, even a few extra weeks can provide a chance to head off a disease before it begins to spread exponentially (Glanz & Robertson, 2020). Unfortunately, this opportunity was lost: Officials prevented the researchers from repurposing the samples because the consent signed by the donors was limited to research uses (Fink & Baker, 2020). The SFS researchers eventually received permission for further testing on the samples but only on the condition that they first obtain new consent that covered public health activities. After weeks of delay, the SFS team decided to run the tests without obtaining new consent, thereby establishing that community spread was already occurring. If the original consent had included public health uses, the SFS team would not have been forced to choose between following the regulations or protecting the public's health. In addition, valuable time would have been saved, and the terrible disease burden currently being experienced in the United States might have been reduced. Proponents of broad consent argue that investigators should solicit individuals' permission to store their samples and make them available for future research uses. 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Berkman","orcid":"0000-0002-9098-0799","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":330802,"name":"David Wendler","orcid":"0000-0002-9359-4439","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":5,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:13:58.531532Z","pmid":"33010181","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}