Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Ilke TurkmendagORCiD
Full text is not currently available for this publication.
In biomedicine, the accessibility of pregnant bodies for biomedical intervention raises important social, ethical and philosophical questions about exploitation and control (Turkmendag 2022). Maternal epigenetics has an interest in individuals’ reproductive capacity with the aim of developing therapeutical or environmental interventions to improve human health down the generations. Drawing on examples from social media and interview accounts of bioethicists and legal thinkers, this talk focuses on whether the increasing focus on “maternal effect” exert power over women to take on new responsibilities. Kenney and Müller (2017: 27) suggest that “as evolutionarily adapted to being optimal gestational environments and caregivers, women’s bodies become de facto sites for research and intervention in relation to the health of her offspring.” In recent years, there has been an increase in the research into linking children’s early development to mother’s lifestyle and behaviour during pregnancy, and even before conception. Poor prenatal diet, prenatal exposure to domestic violence, exposure to maternal distress, Caesarean delivery, alcohol intake before conception and during pregnancy are all linked to epigenetic changes that may cause health problems in the offspring. In this field, the uterus is seen as a micro-environment in which new generations take shape for better and worse. Hence scientists, especially those who work in the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHAD), seek to find out how to control the maternal environment and behaviour to advance the health of the offspring and next generations (Richardson et al 2014). Because epigenetics concerns how gene expression is influenced by the social realm, including a range of environmental conditions such as exposure to chemicals, pollution, and environmental hazards, the research findings in this area have direct policy relevance. For policy makers, rather than controlling the complex range of determinants of health, isolating and targeting the maternal body and “responsibilizing” mothers for the control of this micro-environment might seem more feasible (Turkmendag and Liaw 2022). While the findings from epigenetics research can generate useful insights to enhance people’s lives by tackling with social inequality, they may also bring an undesirable effect of discriminating and stigmatising certain group of people if they are used to make individuals accountable to circumstances that they may not have the capability to control (Richardson 2014, Turkmendag and Liaw 2022). Kenney, M. and Müller, R. (2017) “Of rats and women: narratives of motherhood in environmental epigenetics,” BioSocieties 12(1): 23–46, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-016-0002-7. (How commonsense assumptions about gender shape the understanding of maternal environment in environmental epigenetics) Richardson, S., Daniels, C., Gillman, M. et al. Society: Don't blame the mothers. Nature 512, 131–132 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/512131a Turkmendag I. Exploitation and Control of Women’s Reproductive Bodies. In: Wendy A. Rogers, Jackie Leach Scully, Stacy M. Carter, Vikki Entwistle, Catherine Mills, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Bioethics. Routledge, 2022. Turkmendag I, Liaw Ying-Qi. Maternal epigenetic responsibility: what can we learn from the pandemic?. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 2022, 25, 483-494.
Author(s): Turkmendag I
Publication type: Digital or Visual Media
Publication status: Published
Year: 2024
Series Title: Human Developmental Biology Initiative Ethics Series
Contents: 00:00:00 - Prof. Kate Storey - Introduction 00:02:45 - Dr. Ilke Turkmendag - Maternal Epigenetics and Control of Pregnant Bodies 00:24:36 - Prof. Kate Storey - Introduction 00:26:05 - Dr. David Lawrence - General Research Ethics and Moral Value Concerns of Organoids 00:56:30 - Prof. Kate Storey - Closing
Publisher: Human Developmental Biology Initiative
Place Published: London
URL: https://hdbi.org/ethics-seminars
Notes: Also available at https://youtu.be/3onPfZsB9bU
