Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Comment
  • Published:

The ethics of sequencing infectious disease pathogens for clinical and public health

Using genomic technology to rapidly sequence and analyse pathogens has the potential to deliver a robust, evidence-based approach to the challenge of infectious disease management. The successful implementation of such a response is going to require consideration of the associated ethical, legal and social issues.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Ladner, J. T. et al. Precision epidemiology for infectious disease control. Nat. Med. 25, 206–211 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Vandamme, A.-M. & Pybus, O. G. Viral phylogeny in court: the unusual case of the Valencian anesthetist. BMC Biol. 11, 83 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Millar, M. Moral permissibility and responsibility for infection. Public Health Ethics 5, 314–317 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Gardy, J. L. & Loman, N. J. Towards a genomics-informed, real-time, global pathogen surveillance system. Nat. Rev. Genet. 19, 9 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Parker, M. & Kingori, P. Good and bad research collaborations: researchers’ views on science and ethics in global health research. PLOS ONE 11, e0163579 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Parker, M. & Kwiatkowski, D. P. The ethics of sustainable genomic research in Africa. Genome Biol. 17, 44 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. World Health Organization. World Malaria Report 2018 56–57 (WHO, 2018).

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors are supported by a Wellcome Centre Grant (203132/Z/16/Z) and a Wellcome Strategic Award (096527).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

S.B.J. reviewed the literature and wrote the article. M.P. provided substantial contributions to discussions of the content. Both authors reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stephanie B. Johnson.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Johnson, S.B., Parker, M. The ethics of sequencing infectious disease pathogens for clinical and public health. Nat Rev Genet 20, 313–315 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-019-0109-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-019-0109-3

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing