The politics of 'wrongful life' itself
Discursive (mal)practices and Tay-Sachs disease
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2159454 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shelley Z Reuter (0000-0003-4124-336X) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 236-262 |
| Publication date | 2007-05-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Economy and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0308-5147 • E-ISSN: 1469-5766 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/03085140701254290 |
| OpenAlex | W2030327778 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 36 |
This article examines eight wrongful life/wrongful birth suits filed by parents of children born with Tay-Sachs disease. Their legal claims are analysed in terms of the biopolitics of genetic risk that has emerged in recent decades with a view to arguing that, as health and disease are increasingly understood within a genetics framework, the individual is becoming responsibilized to be proactive and undergo genetic testing. At the same time, this responsibilization is being defined as a kind of entitlement rooted in historically specific ideas about personhood and quality of life. The only option for reconciling this contradiction has been simply to define responsibilization as the individual's right, thereby calling into question the notion of agency in genetic decision-making and revealing that choice in this context is in fact becoming the unfreedom to choose
Agency (philosophy · Biology · Biopower · Context (archaeology · Economics · Entitlement (fair division · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Eugenics · Law and economics · Personhood · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Biomedical Ethics and Regulation · Race, Genetics, and Society · Reproductive Health and Technologies · Law · Philosophy
Genethics
Baby's First Picture
Prenatal Genetic Testing and Screening
Race and Genomics
Racial Profiling in Medical Research
Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm
Discipline and Punish
Technologies of the Self
Critical Events
Global Assemblages
The Logical Case for "Wrongful Life"
Law and the Life Sciences
Disability, Wrongful-Life Lawsuits, and Human Difference
Re-Examining Geneticization
Law and Language
The Sociological Imagination
Wrongful Life
Is the Functional 'Normal'? Aging, Sexuality and the Bio-marking of Successful Living
Blood and bioidentity
Stem Cells, Tissue Cultures and the Production of Biovalue
Bodily Differences and Collective Identities
The Genuine Jewish Type
The Politics of Life Itself
From hegemony to affinity
Gino's lesson on humanity
| Citations per year | 0.13 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2011 - 2019 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |