San ethics code created

South Africa's San people, one of the "most studied indigenous groups in the world", have been making research history on the continent.

Now three South African San communities have drawn up a research ethics code to guide scientists who work with them. The science journal Nature reported this month that the communities were thought to be the first in Africa to issue such guidelines.

Hennie Swart, director of Kimberley's South African San Institute, which was involved in the code's development, told Nature: "We've been bombarded by researchers over the year. It's not a question of not doing the research. It's a question of doing it right."

In Australia, researchers working with indigenous people usually need the approval of groups representing local or regional communities.

The San's hunter-gatherer lifestyle, rock art, click-infused languages and even their whole genome sequence have been studied by scientists.

Now the traditional leaders of the !Xun, Khwe and !Khomani groups, representing some 8000 people, want researchers to submit their proposals to a review panel of community members or they may not support their efforts.

The 2010 publication of the human genome sequences of four San men from Namibia and of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, in Nature highlighted the issue of ethical approval.

The four men were filmed giving verbal consent, through a translator, and the research was approved by a university ethics committee and the Namibian government. But some members of the San were unhappy with the paper, which used terms like "Bushman".

Stellenbosch human rights lawyer Roger Chennells told the journal: "No other recent research has been perceived as being so insulting and arrogant to San leaders."

The communities hope that San groups in Namibia and Botswana will adopt the code and that it will guide researchers who want to work with them.

US-based genome scientist Stephan Schuster, who co-led the study, questioned the universal relevance of the code.

"Why would a San council in South Africa know what we are doing in northern Namibia?" he asked.

But Wits University geneticist Himla Soodyall, who co-authored a 2012 paper analysing the genomes of San individuals, said: "If researchers want to work among the San and that's the protocol, they should honour it. That's social justice."

Wits Univerrsity had received permission for its research from the SA San Council and the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa for that research and told the San men what they had learned about their "genetic ancestry".