Open-ended consent asks donors to agree that their tissue may be used for future research they can’t specifically anticipate. It sounds like a reasonable compromise because science moves in directions no one can fully predict. The trouble is that “future research” can quietly stretch far beyond what a donor ever imagined. Someone donating tissue during cancer treatment is unlikely to picture their cells being cultured into a neural network for biological computing. As biocomputing advances, are our consent processes keeping pace with the science, or are they asking people to agree to a future they never truly envisioned? Read more here.