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Short abstract:

What is the connection between the bio-behavioral data that are prospected from pregnant bodies in prenatal trials and speculative value? And who benefits?

Long abstract:

In clinical trials, enrolling a participant requires consent. Consent is one step in the data collection process that requires the extraction of raw data by organized labor. The data that is collected can include biological and behavioral samples like blood, fecal samples, breast milk, hair samples, cord blood, placenta, medical histories, and food diaries. In my recent book Weighing the Future I examined ongoing pregnancy trials in the US and UK. Pregnancy trials provide the bodies and data that are necessary for understanding epigenetic mechanisms connected to the developmental origins of health and disease. I situate pregnancy trials at the nexus of what I call racial-surveillance-biocapitalism. Black feminism and Black Marxism provide the theoretical framework for understanding how the power relations of exploitation that structured slavery remain relevant for understanding contemporary forms of exploitation in capitalist contexts across reproduction and in relation to race/racism. In this paper, I examine data that I did not get to include in the book to explore questions around the value of the pregnancy data beyond the clinical trials. To better understand forms of extraction and value in contemporary science, my analysis focuses on emerging discussions related to data sharing and intellectual property alongside my own data collection practices and the data collection processes of the clinical trial I ethnographically examined.