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Genomic susceptibility testing and pregnancy: something old, something new

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journal contribution
posted on 2009-12-09, 14:11 authored by Paula SaukkoPaula Saukko
This essay explores how testing for common and complex or genomic, as opposed to genetic, susceptibility to deep vein thrombosis both challenges and consolidates old social discourses on genes, gender and pregnancy. The nexus between genetics and reproduction usually crystallizes in the moral dilemma of selective termination. This essay examines on-line discussion among women with a genomic predisposition to deep vein thrombosis, which is associated with miscarriage and stillbirth. It explores the women’s exchanges on what to “do” in order to safely carry to term a foetus, which may always also have the genomic susceptibility. Interpreting DNA not in terms of predicting fate but of suggesting how to modify one’s behaviour in order to give and care for life blunts its eugenistic edge. However, this interpretation also shoulders discussants with the complicated and laborious responsibility of modifying themselves, their life-styles and the life-styles of their families—all of which falls within women’s traditional labour of love in the privatised age of bioindividuality.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies

Citation

SAUKKO, P., 2004. Genomic susceptibility testing and pregnancy: something old, something new. New Genetics and Society, 23 (3), pp. 313 - 325

Publisher

© Taylor & Francis

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publication date

2004

Notes

This article was published in the journal, New Genetics and Society [© Taylor & Francis]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1463677042000305075

ISSN

1463-6778

Language

  • en