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