Prenatal Genetic Testing Research Paper

Prenatal Genetic Testing: A Technology of Normalization Prenatal genetic testing is a technology made available to more accurately determine whether or not a child could have a birth ‘defect’. The most common birth defects tested for are Down syndrome, Trisomy 18, or an open neural tube defect (Government of Canada, 2013). This paper asserts first that prenatal genetic testing is a technology of normalization, which labels disability as abnormal and a feared outcome, and second that normalization creates unwarranted notions of human identity and happiness. To do this, I begin by providing background information on the work by Michel Foucault on biopower, disciplinary power, and normalization. The purpose of this section is to show first that these forces govern and discipline our behavior and in turn have replaced the traditional (sovereign) source of power. In the next section, I argue that prenatal genetic testing places value in a ‘normal genotype’ and that this normalization affects the ability to make autonomous decisions of all participants involved. From this, I show that prenatal genetic testing is a process of normalization, and how equating disability as a ‘genetically-related’ condition rejects the possibility to identify the power relations at work (namely biopower and disciplinary power). I also argue in this section that science produces biased views towards people with disability. In the next section, I use Nick Bostrom as an objection to my thesis. I use Melinda Hall’s “Vile Sovereign in Bioethical Debate” to counter Bostrom’s objection. I then conclude the paper. Background Information on Biopower, Disciplinary Power, and Normalization In The History of Sexuality, Foucault asserts that the traditional interpretation of a sovereign (think of an absolute monarch) has been replaced (Foucault, 262). He claims that biopower (sometimes called governmentality) is the replacement of the sovereign, and norms are its enforcement. Biopower is primarily concerned in investing in human life (Foucault, 262). It is specifically concerned with obtaining information about birth rates, mortality, and health (Foucault, 262-4). This allowed for a government to manage the mass population or the ‘body politic’ (ibid). Knowing this information served the interest of the state as it allowed for what Foucault called the rise of ‘power-knowledge’, where institutions with power set out to use their influence to create an illusion of knowledge (Rouse, 103). It is important to note for Foucault, all knowledge emerges from complex networks of power in which the exercise of this power creates types of knowledge (O’Farrell, 101). In the classical age, the sovereign was limited in exerting their power over controlling life or death (Foucault, 258). Foucault articulates that the sovereign controlled life or death directly through the death penalty or indirectly by sending troops into war (ibid). The sovereign power controlled just a portion of the population, whereas biopower controls the mass population. The sovereign used its power (through torture) to extract ‘knowledge’, where biopower creates knowledge through adopting policies that create a ‘positive’ influence on life (Foucault, 267). Biopower also incorporates a characteristic of disciplinary power; they are both normalizing. The sovereign incorporated aspects of normalization but, it was entirely based on the fear of punishment by the public. The difference between biopower and disciplinary power is biopower is concerned with knowing facts about the population whereas the later trains the actions of the population through the implementation of norms …show more content…
Hall points out that the problem of the vile sovereign, according to Foucault, is that it is ‘inevitably’ a normalizing force (Hall, 11-2) The three components that make up a vile sovereign are it firstly, claims authority over questions of life and death, secondly it has undeserved status, and thirdly promotes a discourse of laughter or disbelief (Hall, 13-4). To briefly sum up how Hall sees the connection between the vile sovereign and transhumanism: transhumanists claim authority over questions of life and death as they “entertain the question of what lives are worth living” through a hierarchy of human capability, it has undeserved status because of the “puerile preoccupations and utopianism” because of its fantasies of power, and lastly engages in a discourse of laughter and disbelief as transhumanists argue that mortality is a moral problem, which Hall argues can cause a discourse of laughter (Hall, 13-5). So if Hall is correct, then the transhumanist perspective would inevitably normalize because of its status as a ‘vile