Search

Background: Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) strategies that analyze cell-free fetal DNA found in maternal blood have proliferated in the past several years. Many different parties have been involved in the development, evaluation, and diffusion of NIPT, resulting in rhizomatic growth of this technology. Here, we use a technology studies lens to examine the way NIPT has been constructed in informational documents and offer suggestions for ethics analysis. Methods: An inductive qualitative content analysis was conducted on 20 documents produced by organizations that claim authority to construct a version of NIPT (13 vendor documents, 7 health professional society documents). Results: Analysis revealed that each document describes a different version of the test, offering different claims of purpose, target population, health care professional involvement, relationship to other technologies, fallibility, and risk. Conclusions: The different versions of NIPT technologies entail different sets of ethical q...

I have been writing plays for 15 years so that reflection of the heart as well as the mind can be part of equitable and fair health and social policy development. In this paper, I critically reflect on my new play Calcedonies, including the writing of the script and why I had to write it. I include the first section of Calcedonies for the reader to have a sense of the play’s construction, characters, and the issues that will be personalized and unpacked over the course of the play. In the decade it took me to have the courage to begin writing this play, I realize that my reflection was as much about how I let the woman down who asked me to write a play about her, as it was about how our health and social support systems let her down.

I continue to “worry” 1 about how difference becomes pathologized when physicians, medical procedures, and researchers (laboratory and philosophy/social) focus on preventing children of particular ...

Caulfield and Bubela (2007) argue that the Canadian Assisted Human Reproduction Act (An Act Respecting Assisted Human Reproduction and Related Research (S.C. 2004, c.2) imposes a complete “criminal...