Imperfect pregnancies : a history of birth defects and prenatal diagnosis

Author/Creator:

Löwy, Ilana, 1948- author

Publication/Creation:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017

Resource Type:

Book

More Details

Additional/Related Title Information

Full Title:

Imperfect pregnancies : a history of birth defects and prenatal diagnosis / Ilana Lowy

Subjects/Genre

Genre:

Electronic books

Subjects:

Abnormalities, Human
Prenatal diagnosis
Prenatal Diagnosis--history
Congenital Abnormalities--history

Description/Summary

Table of Contents:

Introduction : scrutinized fetuses -- Born imperfect : birth defects before prenatal diagnosis -- Karyotypes -- Human malformations -- From prenatal diagnosis to prenatal screening -- Sex chromosome aneuploidies -- PND and new genomics approaches -- Conclusion : PND's slippery slopes, imagined and real.

Summary:

In the 1960s, thanks to the development of prenatal diagnosis, medicine found a new object of study: the living fetus. At first, prenatal testing was proposed only to women at a high risk of giving birth to an impaired child. But in the following decades, such testing has become routine. In Imperfect Pregnancies, Ilana Löwy argues that the generalization of prenatal diagnosis has radically changed the experience of pregnancy for tens of millions of women worldwide. Löwy follows the rise of biomedical technologies that made prenatal diagnosis possible and investigates the institutional, sociocultural, economic, legal, and political consequences of their widespread diffusion. Because prenatal diagnosis is linked to the contentious issue of selective termination of pregnancy for a fetal anomaly, debates on this topic have largely centered on the rejection of human imperfection and the notion that we are now perched on a slippery slope that will lead to new eugenics. Imperfect Pregnancies tells a more complicated story, emphasizing that there is no single standardized way to scrutinize the fetus, but there are a great number of historically conditioned and situated approaches. -- Provided by publisher.

Language:

English

Physical Type/Description:

1 online resource

Local Note:

Available to current Emory faculty, students and staff.

Additional Identifiers

Catalog ID (MMSID):

9936904032202486

ISBN:

9781421423647
1421423642

OCLC Number:

1004271448

Other Identifiers:

Unspecified: 99975394344