Anticipating in vitro gametogenesis: Hopes and concerns for IVG among diverse stakeholders

In vitro gametogenesis (IVG), the reconstitution of germ cell development in vitro, is an emerging stem cell-based technology with profound implications for reproductive science. Despite researchers' long-term goals for future clinical applications, little is currently known about the views of IVG held by the stakeholders potentially most affected by its introduction in humans. We conducted focus groups and interviews with 80 individuals with lived experience of infertility and/or LGBTQ+ family formation in the US, two intersecting groups of potential IVG users. Respondents expressed hope that IVG would lead to higher reproductive success than current assisted reproductive technology (ART), alleviate suffering associated with ART use, and promote greater social inclusion, while expressing concerns predominantly framed in terms of equity and safety. These findings underscore the importance of sustained engagement with stakeholders with relevant experience to anticipate the implications of IVG for research and clinical translation

New frontiers for Biosocial Birth Cohort Research: interdisciplinary approaches to exposure, harmonisation and collaboration

In this Open Letter we bring together researchers from the Biosocial Birth Cohort Research (BBCR) network to reflect on interdisciplinary research and methods within birth cohorts and to draw attention to social science approaches to this field, which we argue are underutilized. A more comprehensive and consistent integration of social science approaches would expand the scope and value of research with birth cohorts. We critically engage three specific areas of birth cohort research that provide significant opportunities for exchange across disciplines; how exposure is defined and measured in birth cohorts, the harmonisation of data within and between birth cohorts and the broader experience of interdisciplinary collaboration in birth cohorts and birth cohort research. By reflecting on these three areas, we highlight the need for more in-depth dialogue between life and social sciences in the design of birth cohorts, the measures that are used, and the research made possible. We argue that improving the methodological tools for measuring social and biological exposures, incorporating the complexity of participant experience, and ensuring that longitudinal studies are recognised by a wider range of disciplines are essential for collaborative biosocial research with the goal of mitigating health disparities in global and public health

The Effects of Contemporary Political Economy on Laboratory Labor in the Production of Obesity Knowledge and Environmental Biomedical Subjecthood within the Sciences of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease and Epigenetics

Obesity rates have increased over the past few decades in the United States. In response, national research funding has increased, but the field of obesity research is competitive. Therefore, basic science researchers pursue novel explanations that now include environmental determinants of obesity. Those who produce raw experimental data, however, are not principal investigators; they are ‘technicians’ who are post-doctorates, international medical graduates, and recent immigrant scientists. This dissertation, therefore, analyzes how the political economy of laboratory fact making, in the context of a purported health crisis, shapes obesity knowledge and the biomedical workforce at my field site. I argue that research at my site is structured by political and economic forces that impact how investigators and technicians conduct scientific practice in a process I call “anticipatory caretaking practices.” Drawing on scholarship in science, technology, medicine, and also gender and health, the notion of anticipatory caretaking practices reveals what kinds of obesity knowledge are produced and by whom. I show how political and economic precarity impacts anticipatory practices and how that, in turn, affects laboratory experimental systems. I also illustrate how environmental biomedical subjecthood is produced via model animal organisms of human health. In this context, I also demonstrate how the labor of animal biomass is productive of scientific capital in the form of valuable data. Finally, I describe how grant-based funding impacts investigators as they seek novel yet familiar experimental questions to help make them more competitive in the field of developmental environmental obesity research. Each of these findings reflects changes in laboratory labor and show how, as a consequence of the environmental turn in obesity, an environmental politics of reproduction is produced. This dissertation contributes to scholarship at the intersections of science and technology studies, sociology of health and medicine, gender, and work and occupations