Samples are procured, collected, stored and disseminated in accordance with the highest ethical standards and in strictest compliance with all applicable rules and regulations. This includes ensuring that informed consents are fully informative to donors and that the donor's wishes in relation to the use of his/her samples are strictly complied with.

Our collection procedures comply with with the recommendations of the Council of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues Committee (HUGO-ELSI, 1998); with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1997); and with recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects adopted by the 18th World Medical Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, 1964 and later revisions.