Cytogeneticists' stories around the ethics and social consequences of their work: a New Zealand case study.
This paper is based on anthropological research in three New Zealand cytogenetics laboratories involving participant observation carried out over three months and interviews with sixteen cytogeneticists in order to elucidate the distinctive characteristics of their views on the social consequences of their work in prenatal genetic testing. The discourses employed by cytogeneticists to describe their work are placed against other discourses in the contemporary debate surrounding prenatal genetic testing, i.e. clinical, ethical, feminist, social science and disability rights. In general, cytogeneticists frame their moral responsibilities in terms of the need to carry out what we have termed 'distanced care' of both the mothers being tested and the foetal cells which they cultivate in the laboratories. Certain paradoxes arise in these accounts of their work however, such as the idea of distanced care versus their demonstrated personalisation of the foetal cells with which they work and also between their burdensome awareness of the consequences for individual women of their karyotyping and their repeated references to the ethical and social consequences of their work as being determined by society not by their own actions.
Finlay
Susanna
S
Department of Anthropology, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Fitzgerald
Ruth
R
Legge
Mike
M
D000025:Abortion, Eugenic / Q000523:psychology; D000649:Amniocentesis; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001675:Bioethics; D003582:Cytogenetics / Q000941:ethics*; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D019513:Feminism; D005820:Genetic Testing / Q000941:ethics; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007753:Laboratories; D009520:New Zealand; D019370:Observation; D011247:Pregnancy; D037841:Pregnant People; D011296:Prenatal Diagnosis / Q000941:ethics* / Q000523:psychology*; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations