For the biotechnology industry, data that cover the health and genetics of a population can represent a treasure-trove of information. But the marriage of business and such public data is, at best, uneasy. Conflicts over informed consent and privacy have, for example, overshadowed plans by Reykjavik-based deCODE Genetics to establish a health-sector database covering most of Iceland's population. So it was with great fanfare a few years ago that the leading scientific press welcomed a new Swedish biotechnology company: UmanGenomics. Promising that its foundations would be based on popular consent, and pledging an ethical approach to the data it would access, including the public sharing of results, UmanGenomics was promoted as "a model of how public tissue banks should interact with the biotech industry". The biobank in question was created during a health-intervention campaign in the northern Swedish county of Vaesterbotten. During the project, clinical researchers at Umea University collected and collated lifestyle and health data, including blood samples, for a significant proportion of the county's population.
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