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Conflicted hope: social egg freezing and clinical conflicts of interest

journal contribution
posted on 2018-01-01, 00:00 authored by Christopher MayesChristopher Mayes, J Williams, W Lipworth
Over the past decade ‘social egg freezing’ has emerged as a technology of hope that purports to empower women by enabling them to continue their careers or find the right partner without the fear of jeopardising their fertility. This technology has been promoted and celebrated by fertility companies, bioethicists, clinicians, and multi-national corporations such as Apple and Facebook. While critical questions have been raised, they tend to focus on ethical and legal issues, such as informed consent and patient autonomy. This paper uses Foucault’s notion of dispositif as analytic lens to examine the entanglement of the commercial arrangements of fertility companies, the discursive use of hope in promoting these services, and effects on professional medical care. Drawing on socio-political analyses of hope, this paper examines the potential financial conflicts of interest facing clinicians and the way discourses of hope might mask problematic financial relations and lack of evidence of effectiveness.

History

Journal

Health sociology review

Volume

27

Issue

1

Pagination

45 - 59

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Location

Abingdon, Eng.

ISSN

1446-1242

eISSN

1839-3551

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2017, Informa UK