Rumor as ethical vernacular

Ebola and the womb in eastern Congo

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2289322
AutoresMyfanwy Vaughan James (0000-0001-7194-1287, Department of International Development London School of Economics and Political Science London UK, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Volume39
Fascículo3
Páginase70015-e70015
Data de publicação2025-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoMedical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/maq.70015
PMID40692490
OpenAlexW4412578988
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas43

The position of pregnant women in clinical research remains a topic of international ethical debate. Yet, the reflections of actual and potential trial participants, including pregnant women themselves, often remain absent. Following a policy reversal in 2019, pregnant women were eligible to participate in a second Ebola vaccine trial during an epidemic in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This article follows how this decision was perceived in Goma, a city in the DRC, the meanings and functions of the rumors that emerged about reproductive health, and how these rumors influenced pregnant women's experience of the trial. I argue that the womb became a site to discuss broader biopolitical anxieties about collective survival, but that rumors also became a vehicle for ethical debate amid uncertainty. Ethical debates about medical research continue locally through other ethical vernaculars- like rumors- and center on contested ideas of acceptable risk, shaped by collective historical experiences

Criminology · Democracy · Ebola virus · Ethical issues · Outbreak · Political science · Politics · Rumor · Sociology · COVID-19 Impact on Reproduction · Gender Studies · Global Maternal and Child Health · Law · Medicine · Viral Infections and Outbreaks Research · Virology