The Ethics of Research Biobanking investigates some of the ethical, legal and social challenges raised by research biobanking. In the first part of the book the authors pursue the different regulatory options envisaged within a normative terrain dictated by different conceptions and interpretations of the informed consent doctrine. In the second part a completely new approach is explored. The authors investigate the conceptual potential of different analogies outside medical research used to depict people's change and exchange of valuables between themselves and a common institution. The book is aimed at both academic and professional audiences (biobank curators, biobank researchers, ethicists, gene-epidemiologists, health law experts, philosophers, social scientists and advanced and graduate students in the relevant disciplines) as well as health and research regulators, ministries, politicians and the general public.