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The goal of democratic deliberation (DD) bioethics research is to elicit informed and considered opinions on ethically controversial issues. But the trustworthiness of DD outcomes depends on the quality of deliberations. We provide a framework to evaluate the quality of deliberations and apply that framework to a DD project on surrogate consent for dementia research involving randomly selected samples of the older general public. Using a mixed method approach, we found that participants were very satisfied with the sessions, learned and used new information, were respectful and collaborative, and were able to “reason together” to arrive at societal policy recommendations. Implications and limitations of the paper are also discussed.

Researchers and policymakers do not agree about the most appropriate way to get consent for the use of donations to a biobank. The most commonly used method is blanket—or broad—consent where donors allow their donation to be used for any future research approved by the biobank. This approach does not account for the fact that some donors may have moral concerns about the uses of their biospecimens. This problem can be avoided using “real-time”—or study-by-study—consent, but this policy places a significant burden on biobanks. In order to better understand the public’s preferences regarding biobank consent policy, we surveyed a sample that was representative of the population of the United States. Respondents were presented with 5 biobank consent policies and were asked to indicate which policies were acceptable/unacceptable and to identify the best/worst policies. They were also given 7 research scenarios that could create moral concern (e.g. research intending to make abortions safer and more effective) and asked how likely they would be to provide broad consent knowing that their donation might be used in that research. Substantial minorities found both broad and study-by-study consent to be unacceptable and identified those two options as the worst policies. Furthermore, while the type of moral concern (e.g., regarding abortion, the commercial use of donations, or stem cell research) had no effect on policy preferences, an increase in the number of research scenarios generating moral concerns was related to an increased likelihood of finding broad consent to be the worst policy. The rejection of these ethically problematic and costly extremes is good news for biobanks. The challenge now is to design a policy that combines consent with access to information in a way that assures potential donors that their interests and moral concerns are being respected.