UK Biobank - not in our best interest?

The UK Biobank invites people of a certain age (that's me) to become part of a study that would monitor health (or lack of it) over time. Participants donate blood samples for DNA analysis that would allow researchers to determine over time causes of disease and, I'm sure, many other options for improving well being.

I love the idea that each human being has an obligation to contribute in some way to the good of humanity as a whole, so this appears at first sight to be right up my street. However, the bit where I have an issue is the paragraph in the information leaflet which says: "In signing the consent form, participants transfer all property and intellectual property rights in their samples and data to UK Biobank."

I wondered, if I ever withdrew from the study (as the leaflet informs me I could do) what would happen to my intellectual property. So I sent them an email to ask them, and a short while later their "Head of Communications" wrote back to me [although oddly the email was signed by the "UK Biobank Principal Investigator"] In his reply he told me that:

"In signing the consent form we ask participants to transfer all property and intellectual property rights to any developments that emanate from research carried out using their samples and data collected by UK Biobank. Though UK Biobank owns those samples and data, it does not own your blood, urine or information about you (so you could sign up to other projects doing similar research if you wanted to). If you withdrew from the study at the level of ‘no further use’ then UK Biobank would destroy your samples and remove your data from the study. However, it would not be possible to destroy any research (and therefore the findings emanating from such research) that has already taken place. There would be no rights to ‘revert to you’ because you would cease to be a part of the project and therefore your samples and data would no longer be used."

Now if the Biobank require me to sign over the IP rights in my DNA to them, surely I cannot sign the same rights over to someone else? Wouldn't it be better to ask me to grant them worldwide royalty free rights to use the IP in my DNA? I did ask, but apparently not.

The information leaflet was also unclear as to whether the research being undertaken was actually truely for research purposes, or in fact a commercial venture. The answer on that one was:

"It is not possible to prohibit the use of samples and data for research that might involve commercial gain. This is for a number of reasons, not least of which is the complex interaction between the academic, charity and commercial research organisations that makes it hard to prise apart the commercial and non-commercial aspects of any research project. It is also the case that commercial expertise and money is required to develop new treatments, which we hope UK Biobank will help to generate."

As I said, their leaflet is unclear. Make up your own mind. I've withdrawn from the study.