The "Lactation After Infant Death (AID) Framework": A Guide for Online Health Information Provision About Lactation After Stillbirth and Infant Death

Most parents who give birth to a stillborn infant, or who give birth then endure the death of their young infant, will encounter the onset of lactation (McGuinness et al., 2014). For breastfeeding parents who experience the death of their older infant, many will have established lactation or frozen stores of expressed human milk ([EHM] McGuinness et al., 2014). Despite this, lactation and EHM are rarely discussed with bereaved parents in healthcare settings (Britz & Henry, 2013; Carroll, Lenne, McEgan et al., 2014; Redshaw et al., 2014). As a result, many bereaved parents who have recently given birth are unprepared when they begin to lactate, and few are aware of the range of suppression, expression, or donation options that may be available to them (Carroll & Lenne, 2019; McGuinness et al., 2014; Welborn, 2012b). The lack of anticipatory guidance regarding lactation after infant death can be a significant source of distress for parents, exacerbating the emotional pain of their child’s death (Carroll & Lenne, 2019; McGuinness et al., 2014; Welborn, 2012b). This lack may also inadvertently compound the invisibility and ambiguity of parenthood experienced by many bereaved parents (Cacciatore et al., 2008; Layne, 2003; Oreg, 2019). Furthermore, parents bereaved as a result of giving birth to a stillborn infant or enduring their infant’s death are likely to experience breast engorgement, pain, and milk leakage (McGuinness et al., 2014) and, in the absence of reliable information, they may follow lactation management methods that prove ineffective or lead to mastitis or abscess. To prevent adverse outcomes, bereaved parents require anticipatory guidance or lactation support from qualified health professionals.This research is funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP180100517)

The Deadly Business of an Unregulated Global Stem Cell Industry

In 2016, the Office of the State Coroner of New South Wales released its report into the death of an Australian woman, Sheila Drysdale, who had died from complications of an autologous stem cell procedure at a Sydney clinic. In this report, we argue that Mrs Drysdale's death was avoidable, and it was the result of a pernicious global problem of an industry exploiting regulatory systems to sell unproven and unjustified interventions with stem cells.Research for this paper was supported with the funding from an Australian Research Council Linkage Project Grant (LP150100739) and the National University of Singapore, Office of the Deputy President (Research and Technology)—Humanities and Social Sciences Research Fund (WBS: R-171-000-055-646)

Human cloning in film: horror, ambivalence, hope

Fictional filmic representations of human cloning have shifted in relation to the 1997 announcement of the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep, and since therapeutic human cloning became a scientific practice in the early twentieth century. The operation and detail of these shifts can be seen through an analysis of the films The Island (2005) and Aeon Flux (2005). These films provide a site for the examination of how these changes in human cloning from fiction to practice, and from horror to hope, have been represented and imagined, and how these distinctions have operated visually in fiction, and in relation to genre

Using qualitative research methods in biomedical innovation:the case of cultured red blood cells for transfusion

Background  Qualitative research has a key role to play in biomedical innovation projects. This article focuses on the appropriate use of robust social science methodologies (primarily focus group studies) for identifying the public’s willingness and preference for emerging medical technologies. Our study was part of the BloodPharma project (now known as the Novosang project) to deliver industrially generated red blood cells for transfusion. Previous work on blood substitutes shows that the public prefers donated human blood. However, no research has been conducted concerning attitudes to stem cell derived red blood cells.  Method  Qualitative research methods including interviews and focus groups provide the methodological context for this paper.  Results  Focus groups were used to elicit views from sub-sections of the UK population about the potential use of such cultured red blood cells. We reflect on the appropriateness of that methodology in the context of the BloodPharma project. Findings are in the form of lessons transferable to other interdisciplinary, science-led teams about what a social science dimension can bring; why qualitative research should be included; and how it can be used effectively.  Discussion  Qualitative data collection offers the strength of exploring ambivalence and investigating the reasons for views, but not necessarily their prevalence in wider society. The inherent value of a qualitative method, such as focus groups, therefore lies in its ability to uncover new information. This contrasts with a quantitative approach to simply ‘measuring’ public opinion on a topic about which participants may have little prior knowledge. We discuss a number of challenges including: appropriate roles for embedded social scientists and the intricacies of doing upstream engagement as well as some of the design issues and limitations associated with the focus group method

Oöcyte markets: global tissue economies and women’s reproductive work in embryonic stem cell research

Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) research, otherwise known as therapeutic cloning, requires large numbers of research oöcytes, placing pressure on an already limited supply. In the UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore and most of Western Europe, oöcytes are made available through modestly reimbursed donation, and, due to the onerous nature of donation, the existing demand for reproductive oöcytes far outstrips availability. SCNT research will place this system under even greater pressure. This paper investigates the growth in a global market for oöcytes, where transnational IVF clinics broker sales between generally poor, female vendors and wealthy purchasers, beyond the borders of national regulation, and with little in the way of clinical or bioethical scrutiny. It considers the possible impact that SCNT research will have on this global market, and suggests some ways to improve the protection, security and power of vendors

Aids and the body politic: The biochemical imagination and the representation of sexual difference

The thesis addresses the question of the relationship between biomedical AIDS discourse and the sexual politics of AIDS, from a feminist point of view. It uses the absence of the category "heterosexual men" as "targets" for AIDS education discourse as its starting point to explore the pathologisation of other categories of sexual identity in biomedical discourse. This exploration focuses on the various ways that biomedical discourse deploys concepts of sexual difference and sexual identity in its explanations for what HIV infection is and how transmission occurs. It proceeds through an examination of the implicitly sexed "imaginary anatomies" of normalcy and pathology which organise the key biomedical sub-disciplines involved in the specification of HIV/AIDS, and the discursive processes through which these anatomies are figured. This involved an analysis of the microanatomy of HIV in immunology and virology, its macroanatomy as figured in epidemiology and public health discourse, and of the function of the HIV test as a technology which mediates between these two levels of scale. This analysis demonstrates that AIDS biomedicine strongly privileges phallic bodies, that is bodies conceptualised as non-receptive, as clean, while receptivity is associated with abjection and contagion. The anxieties and projection involved in equating heterosexual masculinity with this phallic body are discussed. It also demonstrates the extent to which AIDS biomedical discourse constitutes a discourse about social order, prescribing what it considers appropriate relationships between bodily order. sexual relations and the health of the body politic. The thesis concludes by re-framing its analysis as an analysis of a particular historical moment in the bio-politics of sexual identity, and speculates about the significance of the emergence of queer politics as a response to this moment

Incipient Infertility: Tracking Eggs and Ovulation Across the Life Course

Tracking in/fertility—through ovulation biosensing, menstrual and perimenopausal apps, and ovarian reserve testing—is becoming increasingly commonplace amongst relatively privileged women in the Global North. Taking place on and through platforms comprised of devices, bodies, and discourses, such self-tracking articulates forms of in/fertility and reproductive futures that are, we argue, closely entwined with emerging forms of biomedical capitalization. While reproductive medicine focused on the creation of children has been entwined with corporate interests since the development of in vitro fertilization in the 1980s, fertility as an asset, or future value, is increasingly targeted by the new innovation sectors as a specific capacity, separable from reproduction per se, in which women should invest if they are not to fall prey to incipient infertility. Synthesizing our separate empirical work in this field, this paper theorizes the connections between the emergence of self-tracking logics and cultures, the burgeoning of consumer-oriented, clinical services, and contemporary social anxieties around fertility decline. Even in countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom, where birth rates are stable, (some) women’s fertility is being refigured as precious and vulnerable, something to be tracked, documented, and attended to in the name of individual future happiness and fulfilment. Women with enough financial and cultural capital are encouraged to monitor their periods, come to know their ovulation patterns, and become aware of their ovarian reserve, and, importantly, to act prudently on such knowledge to safeguard their reproductive futures