By illuminating the ways in which all four critical elements of translational genomic research — its goals, hypotheses, methods, and social constraints — are dependent on trade-offs between scientific and non-scientific considerations, the 2011 ELSI Congress raises a much broader question for research ethics. If biomedicine’s flagship research movement is shot through with negotiations involving parties with different values and priorities, surely the larger clinical research enterprise is subject to the same social forces. Should these forces be embraced as the “democratization of science,” or resisted as the distortion of science by social agendas? If such negotiations are inevitable and ubiquitous, how should they be managed if they are to be dealt with responsibly?
