Research ethics
Consent, voluntary participation, and protecting people who take part.
Taking part in Shared Blood research is always voluntary and informed. Consent is specific to each purpose, vulnerable people receive extra protection, and no activity is treated as ethically approved without human review.
We use purpose-specific consent, not one universal checkbox. Consent explains the purpose, what is collected, any recording, how information is used and published, retention, that participation is voluntary, and how to withdraw. Historical consent records are never overwritten when wording changes.
Participation, recording, public publication, and research follow-up are separate choices (they are never bundled into a single required decision.
You can withdraw identifiable data. We explain clearly that information already combined into an anonymous published statistic may not be individually removable, and we never promise removal where that is not technically possible.
Children and infants are vulnerable and receive heightened review. Our learning booklet educates childcare workers about signs to notice and escalate (it never creates child health profiles, infant risk records, or orphanage child databases. Institutional permission does not replace ethical review.
A speaker's consent does not authorise publishing identifiable information about family members, patients, children, colleagues, or institutions. Patient anecdotes are personal perspectives, not clinical records, diagnoses, or prevalence evidence.
Ethics decisions are made by people, not by software. The website never automatically decides that an activity is ethically approved, safe to publish, or legally sufficient. Scientific review and ethics review are separate.
