Ethics of DNA research on human remains: five globally applicable guidelines

Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg^{1

2}, David Anthony^{3

4}, Hiba Babiker⁵, Eszter Bánffy⁶, Thomas Booth⁷, Patricia Capone⁸, Arati Deshpande-Mukherjee⁹, Stefanie Eisenmann^{5

10}, Lars Fehren-Schmitz^{11

12}, Michael Frachetti¹³, Ricardo Fujita¹⁴, Catherine J Frieman¹⁵, Qiaomei Fu¹⁶, Victoria Gibbon¹⁷, Wolfgang Haak⁵, Mateja Hajdinjak⁷, Kerstin P Hofmann⁶, Brian Holguin¹⁸, Takeshi Inomata¹⁹, Hideaki Kanzawa-Kiriyama²⁰, William Keegan²¹, Janet Kelso¹⁰, Johannes Krause¹⁰, Ganesan Kumaresan²², Chapurukha Kusimba²³, Sibel Kusimba²³, Carles Lalueza-Fox²⁴, Bastien Llamas^{25

26}, Scott MacEachern²⁷, Swapan Mallick^{1

28

29}, Hirofumi Matsumura³⁰, Ana Y Morales-Arce³¹, Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute³², Veena Mushrif-Tripathy⁹, Nathan Nakatsuka¹, Rodrigo Nores³³, Christine Ogola³⁴, Mercedes Okumura³⁵, Nick Patterson^{4

29}, Ron Pinhasi^{2

36}, Samayamantri P R Prasad³⁷, Mary E Prendergast³⁸, Jose Luis Punzo³⁹, David Reich^{40

41

42

43}, Rikai Sawafuji⁴⁴, Elizabeth Sawchuk^{45

46}, Stephan Schiffels^{5

10}, Jakob Sedig^{47

48}, Svetlana Shnaider⁴⁹, Kendra Sirak^{50

51}, Pontus Skoglund⁷, Viviane Slon^{52

53}, Meradeth Snow⁵⁴, Marie Soressi⁵⁵, Matthew Spriggs^{15

56}, Philipp W Stockhammer^{57

58}, Anna Szécsényi-Nagy⁵⁹, Kumarasamy Thangaraj^{37

60}, Vera Tiesler⁶¹, Ray Tobler^{23

25}, Chuan-Chao Wang^{62

63}, Christina Warinner^{10

64}, Surangi Yasawardene⁶⁵, Muhammad Zahir^{5

66}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
² Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
³ Department of Anthropology, Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY, USA.
⁴ Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁵ Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
⁶ Romano-Germanic Commission of the German Archaeological Institute, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
⁷ Francis Crick Institute, London, UK.
⁸ Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁹ Department of Ancient Indian History Culture and Archaeology, Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute, Pune, India.
¹⁰ Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
¹¹ Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA. lfehrens@ucsc.edu.
¹² UCSC Genomics Institute, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA. lfehrens@ucsc.edu.
¹³ Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA.
¹⁴ Centro de Genética y Biología Molecular, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de San Martín de Porres, Lima, Peru.
¹⁵ School of Archaeology and Anthropology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
¹⁶ Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
¹⁷ Division of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology, Department of Human Biology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
¹⁸ Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
¹⁹ School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
²⁰ National Museum of Nature and Science, Ibaraki, Japan.
²¹ Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville, FL, USA.
²² Department of Genetics, School of Biological Sciences, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, India.
²³ Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA.
²⁴ Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF), Barcelona, Spain.
²⁵ Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, School of Biological Sciences and The Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
²⁶ ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
²⁷ Office of the Chancellors, Duke Kunshan University, Jiangsu, China.
²⁸ Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, MA, USA.
²⁹ Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA.
³⁰ School of Health Science, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan.
³¹ Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
³² Lithuanian Institute of History and Department of Archaeology, History Faculty, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania.
³³ Departamento de Antropología, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Instituto de Antropología de Córdoba (IDACOR), CONICET, Córdoba, Argentina.
³⁴ Earth Sciences Department, National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya.
³⁵ Department of Genetics and Evolutionary Biology, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
³⁶ Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
³⁷ DBT-Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad, India.
³⁸ Department of Anthropology, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA. mary@rice.edu.
³⁹ Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Michoacán, Mexico.
⁴⁰ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. reich@genetics.med.harvard.edu.
⁴¹ Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. reich@genetics.med.harvard.edu.
⁴² Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, MA, USA. reich@genetics.med.harvard.edu.
⁴³ Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA. reich@genetics.med.harvard.edu.
⁴⁴ School of Advanced Sciences, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Kanagawa, Japan.
⁴⁵ Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
⁴⁶ Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA.
⁴⁷ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. Jakob_Sedig@hms.harvard.edu.
⁴⁸ Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Jakob_Sedig@hms.harvard.edu.
⁴⁹ ArchaeoZOOlogy in Siberia and Central Asia-ZooSCAn, CNRS-IAET SB RAS International Research Laboratory, Novosibirsk, Russia.
⁵⁰ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. Kendra_Sirak@hms.harvard.edu.
⁵¹ Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Kendra_Sirak@hms.harvard.edu.
⁵² Department of Anatomy and Anthropology and Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
⁵³ The Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
⁵⁴ Anthropology Department, University of Montana, Missoula, MO, USA.
⁵⁵ Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.
⁵⁶ Vanuatu Cultural Centre, Port Vila, Vanuatu.
⁵⁷ Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. philipp.stockhammer@lmu.de.
⁵⁸ Institute for Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology and Archaeology of the Roman Provinces, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany. philipp.stockhammer@lmu.de.
⁵⁹ Institute of Archaeogenomics, Research Centre for the Humanities, Eötvös Loránd Research Network, Budapest, Hungary.
⁶⁰ CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India.
⁶¹ School of Anthropological Sciences, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Mérida, Mexico.
⁶² Department of Anthropology and Ethnology, Institute of Anthropology, School of Sociology and Anthropology, State Key Laboratory of Cellular Stress Biology, School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China.
⁶³ School of Basic Medical Sciences, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, and Institute of Asian Civilizations, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
⁶⁴ Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁶⁵ Department of Anatomy, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka.
⁶⁶ Department of Archaeology, Hazara University, Mansehra, Pakistan.

PMID: 34671160
PMCID: PMC7612683
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04008-x

Ethics of DNA research on human remains: five globally applicable guidelines

Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg et al. Nature. 2021 Nov.

. 2021 Nov;599(7883):41-46.

doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-04008-x. Epub 2021 Oct 20.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
² Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
³ Department of Anthropology, Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY, USA.
⁴ Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁵ Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
⁶ Romano-Germanic Commission of the German Archaeological Institute, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
⁷ Francis Crick Institute, London, UK.
⁸ Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁹ Department of Ancient Indian History Culture and Archaeology, Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute, Pune, India.
¹⁰ Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
¹¹ Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA. lfehrens@ucsc.edu.
¹² UCSC Genomics Institute, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA. lfehrens@ucsc.edu.
¹³ Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA.
¹⁴ Centro de Genética y Biología Molecular, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de San Martín de Porres, Lima, Peru.
¹⁵ School of Archaeology and Anthropology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
¹⁶ Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
¹⁷ Division of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology, Department of Human Biology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
¹⁸ Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
¹⁹ School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
²⁰ National Museum of Nature and Science, Ibaraki, Japan.
²¹ Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville, FL, USA.
²² Department of Genetics, School of Biological Sciences, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, India.
²³ Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA.
²⁴ Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF), Barcelona, Spain.
²⁵ Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, School of Biological Sciences and The Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
²⁶ ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
²⁷ Office of the Chancellors, Duke Kunshan University, Jiangsu, China.
²⁸ Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, MA, USA.
²⁹ Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA.
³⁰ School of Health Science, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan.
³¹ Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
³² Lithuanian Institute of History and Department of Archaeology, History Faculty, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania.
³³ Departamento de Antropología, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Instituto de Antropología de Córdoba (IDACOR), CONICET, Córdoba, Argentina.
³⁴ Earth Sciences Department, National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya.
³⁵ Department of Genetics and Evolutionary Biology, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
³⁶ Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
³⁷ DBT-Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad, India.
³⁸ Department of Anthropology, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA. mary@rice.edu.
³⁹ Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Michoacán, Mexico.
⁴⁰ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. reich@genetics.med.harvard.edu.
⁴¹ Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. reich@genetics.med.harvard.edu.
⁴² Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, MA, USA. reich@genetics.med.harvard.edu.
⁴³ Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA. reich@genetics.med.harvard.edu.
⁴⁴ School of Advanced Sciences, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Kanagawa, Japan.
⁴⁵ Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
⁴⁶ Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA.
⁴⁷ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. Jakob_Sedig@hms.harvard.edu.
⁴⁸ Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Jakob_Sedig@hms.harvard.edu.
⁴⁹ ArchaeoZOOlogy in Siberia and Central Asia-ZooSCAn, CNRS-IAET SB RAS International Research Laboratory, Novosibirsk, Russia.
⁵⁰ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. Kendra_Sirak@hms.harvard.edu.
⁵¹ Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Kendra_Sirak@hms.harvard.edu.
⁵² Department of Anatomy and Anthropology and Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
⁵³ The Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
⁵⁴ Anthropology Department, University of Montana, Missoula, MO, USA.
⁵⁵ Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.
⁵⁶ Vanuatu Cultural Centre, Port Vila, Vanuatu.
⁵⁷ Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. philipp.stockhammer@lmu.de.
⁵⁸ Institute for Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology and Archaeology of the Roman Provinces, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany. philipp.stockhammer@lmu.de.
⁵⁹ Institute of Archaeogenomics, Research Centre for the Humanities, Eötvös Loránd Research Network, Budapest, Hungary.
⁶⁰ CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India.
⁶¹ School of Anthropological Sciences, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Mérida, Mexico.
⁶² Department of Anthropology and Ethnology, Institute of Anthropology, School of Sociology and Anthropology, State Key Laboratory of Cellular Stress Biology, School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China.
⁶³ School of Basic Medical Sciences, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, and Institute of Asian Civilizations, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
⁶⁴ Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁶⁵ Department of Anatomy, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka.
⁶⁶ Department of Archaeology, Hazara University, Mansehra, Pakistan.

PMID: 34671160
PMCID: PMC7612683
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04008-x

Abstract

We are a group of archaeologists, anthropologists, curators and geneticists representing diverse global communities and 31 countries. All of us met in a virtual workshop dedicated to ethics in ancient DNA research held in November 2020. There was widespread agreement that globally applicable ethical guidelines are needed, but that recent recommendations grounded in discussion about research on human remains from North America are not always generalizable worldwide. Here we propose the following globally applicable guidelines, taking into consideration diverse contexts. These hold that: (1) researchers must ensure that all regulations were followed in the places where they work and from which the human remains derived; (2) researchers must prepare a detailed plan prior to beginning any study; (3) researchers must minimize damage to human remains; (4) researchers must ensure that data are made available following publication to allow critical re-examination of scientific findings; and (5) researchers must engage with other stakeholders from the beginning of a study and ensure respect and sensitivity to stakeholder perspectives. We commit to adhering to these guidelines and expect they will promote a high ethical standard in DNA research on human remains going forward.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Comment in

Collaborate equitably in ancient DNA research and beyond.
Somel M, Altınışık NE, Özer F, Ávila-Arcos MC. Somel M, et al. Nature. 2021 Dec;600(7887):37. doi: 10.1038/d41586-021-03541-z. Nature. 2021. PMID: 34848866 No abstract available.
Ancient-DNA researchers write their own rules.
Tsosie KS, Bader AC, Fox K, Bolnick DA, Garrison NA, Smith RWA. Tsosie KS, et al. Nature. 2021 Dec;600(7887):37. doi: 10.1038/d41586-021-03542-y. Nature. 2021. PMID: 34848867 No abstract available.
Community partnerships are fundamental to ethical ancient DNA research.
Kowal E, Weyrich LS, Argüelles JM, Bader AC, Colwell C, Cortez AD, Davis JL, Figueiro G, Fox K, Malhi RS, Matisoo-Smith E, Nayak A, Nelson EA, Nicholas G, Nieves-Colón MA, Russell L, Ulm S, Vergara-Silva F, Villanea FA, Wagner JK, Yracheta JM, Tsosie KS. Kowal E, et al. HGG Adv. 2023 Jan 11;4(2):100161. doi: 10.1016/j.xhgg.2022.100161. eCollection 2023 Apr 13. HGG Adv. 2023. PMID: 37101579 Free PMC article.

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Ethics of DNA research on human remains: five globally applicable guidelines

Affiliations

Ethics of DNA research on human remains: five globally applicable guidelines

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Abstract

Conflict of interest statement

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