In the context of biobanking, there has been a shift toward conceptions of research donations as “conditional gifts,” in which participants are understood to attach varying conditions to their donations Such perspectives highlight the ongoing interests of the donor in their donation, and emphasize interaction, engagement, and collaboration between participants, researchers, and society.

By focusing on ongoing returns of favors between participants and researchers, this conditional-gift model can incorporate both participants’ collective interests in how samples are used or what research is pursued with them, and also their individual conditions of acceptance, and enables participants to retain some degree of control throughout the research process. This process of biobanks “returning something,” however, is complex and subject to different interpretations and understandings. As such, it then becomes salient to ask what forms of reciprocity or “favors” are offered to potential biobank participants?

Based on focus group research with participants of the UK Biobank and the KORA study, together with other biobank participants and wider lay publics in the United Kingdom and Germany, we empirically examine how potential and actual participants in population biobanks negotiate the complex relationship between concerns in privacy protection, reciprocity and benefit sharing. We then discuss the broad strategies of recruitment of the UK Biobank and KORA to explore the need for flexible modes of reciprocity in future population biobanking strategies.

Born February 8, 1958, professor at the department of Political Science at the University of Vienna. He also directs the Life Science Governance Research Platform at the University of Vienna.

He gained his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna (1984), was a graduate student at the University of Rochester, New York (1983–83). He had post-doc positions at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University (1989–90), and at MIT’s program in Science, Technology, and Society. Gottweis served as assistant professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University, New York (1993–95); as visiting professor in the Department of Social Studies, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (1997); at the Australian School of Environmental Studies, Griffith University (2004); and is currently Visiting Professor at United Nations University, Tokyo (2009–), and professor of sociology at Kyung Hee University, Seoul (2011–12).

He has published widely in the fields of science and society, comparative governance, and ethical governance. Among his book publications are The Argumentative Turn Revisited: Public Policy as Communicate Practice (together with Frank Fischer,published with Duke University Press in May 2012; The Global Politics of Stem Cell Science: Regenerative Medicine in Transition; (2009, Palgrave Macmillan) and, Biobanks: Comparative Governance (2008, Routledge).