privacy, confidentiality, studying hormone levels in female, depression, and anxiety, biospecimen collection, blood, volunteers with history of depression and anxiety
A postgraduate science student sought to study the hormone levels of adult female volunteers with history of depression and anxiety. In doing so, she performed chemical analyses in a tertiary hospital’s research laboratory and results were then uploaded to a secure database. Blood specimens were usually delivered to her in Vacutainer tubes with the name labels obscured with random code numbers, but one batch of specimen tubes had not had their labels altered yet and she could read the volunteers’ names.
She noticed that one volunteer’s name and age was the same as that of her favorite singer. She was amused by the coincidence and decided, as a joke within her circle of friends, to snap a selfie of herself grinning and holding the tube with the label towards the camera. Her friends were all aware of how big a fan she was of the singer and would often tease her about it. The student shared the photo on her private Instagram account for her friends to see and went on with her work.
Three hours later, she took a break before trying to contact her supervisor to find out how she should record the results for the specimens that had not been assigned unique identifier. She checked her messages on her phone and sure enough, her friends on Instagram had responded with laughing and heart emojis. Then she noticed a direct message from a friend who requested to repost her photo on his TikTok account. She was about to reply to tell him not to do so when she saw another more recent message from him. To her dismay, she read that he had already publicly posted the photo without awaiting her permission and he was sharing his excitement with her that his post had gone viral.
Horrified and fearing the worst, she opened her own TikTok account and sure enough, his post was trending, along with the singer’s name. Intrepid social media users had scrutinized the name label and identified that it was from a women’s hospital that also provided maternity care. Social media had leapt to the conclusion that the singer was either pregnant or attempting to conceive despite not being married. Lost in the news frenzy was the fact that the birth date on the label was not singer’s actual birth date.
The student knew she was in trouble because although the photo was focused on the specimen tube label, the student’s face was still clearly recognizable. Unable to stop herself from reading the accumulating social media comments, she also became burdened with the guilt that her joke had resulted in a swell of negative attention toward the singer. The student was at a loss as to what to do.
Questions
What ethics principles or requirements did the student violate by sharing the photo with her friends on her social media account? Would it have made a difference if there was no name on the specimen tube and she was simply taking and sharing a personal photo in the lab?
What possible corrective actions might be taken to address the problematic behavior and/or the harm done? What might help to prevent such things from happening in the future (both the use of unintentionally identifiable samples and publicizing the study information)?
Who bears responsibility to take corrective actions and why?
