Paper short abstract:

How are efforts to make “good science” motivated by “good intentions” challenged by current political and economic climates? This paper addresses this question in the setting of epigenetic research paradigms that target women’s bodies as fetal environments.

Paper long abstract:

Epigenetics, the emerging study of gene-environment interaction and genetic expression, is changing the way pregnant women are treated, cared for, and studied. My research explores clinical trials that use epigenetic theories to test nutritional interventions on pregnant women deemed obese. During 2012 and 2014, I collected ethnographic data at two clinical trial sites, one in the U.S. and one in the U.K.

Through epigenetics we understand that the environment of a mother or pregnant woman is important to future development, and we can also understand women's bodies as environments. If taken seriously, epigenetics simultaneously opens up and multiplies concepts of "the environment," as well as intensifies attention and anticipation around individual women.

For this paper I draw from ethnographic data collected at each clinical trial to explore the motivations behind the design and implementation of the clinical trials. I find that the political and economic climate characterized by a cost-benefit analysis of health treatment, challenges the meaning and method of producing "good science". As a result, the interventions are disconnected from broader scales of the environment, living conditions, and cultural context. The unintended consequence of targeting pregnant women for intervention is that women end up being blamed for the adverse health outcomes of their future children. I conclude by discussing the potential benefits of bridging science and technology approaches with a focus on the subjectivity and experiences of not only scientists that design clinical trials, but also the pregnant women enrolled in in the co-production of scientific knowledge.