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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 41-46 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Nature |
| Volume | 599 |
| Issue number | 7883 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 4 2021 |
Funding
Acknowledgements The participants in the workshop on ancient DNA ethics who are authors thank many colleagues who improved this article through discussions and critical comments. To ensure open access, the authors have applied a CC BY licence to any accepted manuscript arising from this submission. C.J.F. acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP160100811. V.G. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation (NRF) South Africa; opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the authors and are not necessarily attributed to the NRF. M.O. acknowledges support from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico grant 302163/2017-4 and from Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo grant 2018/23282-5. P.S. acknowledges Francis Crick Institute core funding (FC001595) from Cancer Research UK, the UK Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. V.S. acknowledges funding from the Alon Fellowship. M. Soressi acknowledges support from Dutch Research council grant VI.C.191.070. A.S.-N. acknowledges the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. K.T. was supported by a J. C. Bose Fellowship (JCB/2019/000027), SERB and CSIR, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. C.W. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC-2017-StG 804844-DAIRYCULTURES) and the Werner Siemens Stiftung. The authors from Harvard Medical School acknowledge support from the John Templeton Foundation (6122) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The authors from MPI Leipzig and MPI Jena are funded by the Max Planck Society and the Max Planck Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean. R.N., E.S., J.S., K.S., V.T., and J.L.P. acknowledge support from the National Geographic Society.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Howard Hughes Medical Institute | |
| 6122 | |
| National Geographic Society | |
| Wellcome Trust | |
| The Francis Crick Institute | FC001595 |
| 844014 | |
| Medical Research Council | |
| Cancer Registry of Norway Institute of Population-Based Cancer Research | |
| ERC-2017-StG 804844-DAIRYCULTURES | |
| Australian Research Council | DP160100811 |
| Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India | |
| 2018/23282-5 | |
| VI.C.191.070 | |
| Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico | 302163/2017-4 |
| JCB/2019/000027 | |