Reimagining prenatal care

This project explores the emergence of new tests in prenatal care in three European democracies: Germany, Austria, and Italy. It focuses on cell-free fetal DNA testing, which capitalizes on the circulation of DNA fragments shed from the placenta into a womans bloodstream as well as on the ability of new technologies (so-called next-generation sequencing technologies) to analyze these fragments inexpensively and quickly. Hence, such tests provide clues about the DNA of a fetus without putting a pregnancy at risk through an invasive biopsy (such tests are therefore also known as non-invasive prenatal tests). These tests began to be introduced into clinic settings in 2011 but have in just four years expanded substantially. Such expansion has given rise to a debate in which actors discuss technical aspects of this testing, its social desirability, and consider where this tests might or should develop to the future. Since this debate evolved in different ways in different countries, this project asks why this is the case. It asks how Germany, Austria, and Italy have been integrating cffDNA testing into prenatal care, and why they have been doing this so differently. Building on cross-country comparative methods, the project first explores practices of cffDNA testing, questioning of such practices or endorsements of them, as well as regulatory debates across different spaces. Second, it analyzes how visions and values articulated in these sites enter into conflict and conversation. This helps us distill those imaginaries of care that, the project argues, help us understand why different nations make sense of the same technology in such different ways. Such imaginaries crystallize socially shared understanding on what good care looks like, what kind of technologies should be involved when taking care of human life, as well as politically stabilized ideas on how communities should share or distribute responsibility, when taking care of technologies and human life. The major aim of this project is to develop this concept, building on the empirical work, so as to enhance our understanding of how democracies and biomedicine relate and interact. The project will be situated at the Department of Science and Technology Studies of Vienna. Dr. Ingrid Metzler will be the PI. She will be mentored by Prof. Ulrike Felt.

No additional funding sources recorded.