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subRosa Glossary: Sex and Gender in the Biotech Century
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(Quotes are from Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary unless otherwise noted)
Assisted Conception Technologies -or-
Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) -or-
Advanced Reproductive Technologies (ART) -or-
New Reproductive Technologies (NRT - RepTech):
These technologies separate sex from reproduction. However, they are medically surveilled disciplinary systems which may restrict autonomy, and reinforce gender roles and control of women’s (and sometimes men’s) bodies. For example:
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Bionic:“A science concerned with the application of data about the functioning of biological systems to the solution of engineering problems.” (Such as the Bionic Woman, for example?)
Biopiracy: Illegal appropriation (and often patenting) of genetic materials from other cultures and countries. Often performed by American pharmaceutical companies in non-American rainforests.
Biotechnology: “The aspect of technology concerned with the application of biological and engineering data to problems relating to man and the machine (sic).” “Techniques that use living organisms or their components to make products.“--California Trade and Commerce Agency) Includes work on problematic objects such as potatoes, tomatoes, pigs, and women.
Capitation: “The practice in managed care (MC) companies in which providers are alloted a fixed sum for each person they care for in the (usually profit-making) plan, during a month or year, rather than being reimbursed one fee for each service provided as in the traditional FFS(fee-for-service) practice. In order to increase earnings and keep his or her job, the physician must care for these patients for some figure less than what the capitation provides. This creates a conflict of interest for the physician...” (Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Our Bodies Ourselves for the New Century: A Book by and for Women.)
Code of Codes: The genetic code. Also the binary electronic code: 0+1. Also known as the “Master Code“. The solution to the Riddle of Life. Here’s how the code is structured:
Chromosomes: “One of the usually linear nucleo-protein-containing basophilic bodies of the cell nucleus made up of chromatids.” (basophilic: staining readily with basic stains. chromatids: one of the paired complex strands of a chromosome). So a chromosome is a complex strand of protein found in the cell nucleus, containing easy-to-stain matter.
Cell division: Chromatin fibers are packed in the cell nucleus. Each chromatin fiber consists of a thread of DNA. Before a cell divides to form two new cells, 46 chromosomes take shape from these fibers. Through segments of DNA called genes, DNA determines the makeup of every cell and the hereditary traits of each of us.
Cryopreservation: Frozen preservation of biological tissues, organs, and bodies (including sperm, eggs, and embryos) in liquid nitrogen cooled containers.
Cyborg (Cybernetic Organism): Term coined by Manfred Clynes in 1960. A self-regulating man-machine system which extends its control systems in order to adapt the organism to new environments. “I’d rather be a cyborg than a Goddess.” (Donna Haraway) Maybe our next president?
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Disjecta: That which is abject, bodily, useless, non-viable, repressed. Discarded by-products of biotechnology such as selective reduction embryos. Reproductive wastage such as hordes of frozen human embryos. ” The mode of presence and absence changes for differently positioned citizens in technoscientific public reproductive visual culture more than absolute presence or absence. The visual icons of hungry infants do not perform the same semiotic work as the icons of the highly cultivated on-screen fetuses favored by Bell Telephone.” (Haraway, Modest Witness, 203)
DNA: deoxyribonucleic acid. The Elixir of Life and the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. “Nucleic acids located especially in cell nuclei which are the molecular basis of heredity in many organisms; arranged in a double helix structure“. Crimesolver beloved of cops and lawyers everywhere.
Double Helix: The iconic image for the genetic code--“a structure this pretty just had to exist” (Watson). “Discovered” and popularized by Crick and Watson, this structure has since been critiqued and questioned by other scientists. For example, “Rosalind Franklin who did much of the pioneering imaging of DNA for Watson and Crick, doubted whether DNA was necessarily helical” and sent Crick a note to that effect (Robert Root-Bernstein).
EFM (Electronic Fetal Monitor): Machine which shows the fetal heart rate, the pattern of uterine contractions, and much other information about mother and baby during birth. Events are recorded on a continuous data “strip” generated by the Monitor.
Embryo: “The developing human individual from the time of implantation to the end of the eighth week after conception.” Only in the age of full fetal surveillance can it be determined at what moment an embryo becomes a fetus.
Embryology: The science of the development of embryonic organisms.
Epigenesis: “Development of new characters (as of a whole new plant) in an initially undifferentiated entity (as a fertilized egg or spore). Before the discovery of DNA the two rival theories of the development of complex organisms from germinative cells were Epigenesis and Preformation. See Preformation. Evolution (Darwinian theory of): “A theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations.”
Eugenics: “A science that deals with the improvement [sic] (as by the control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed.” Made infamous by the Third Reich, but ideologically latent within the new biotechnologies under late capitalism. New Eugenics: quality controlled reproduction made possible by genetic engineering and new reproductive technologies.
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Fee-for-Service (FFS): An insurance system in which medical care providers bill third-party payers for each medical visit, treatment, or service provided as a separate job--a fee for a service. Like all insurance-based plans under late capital, it remains within the logic of the for-profit insurance industry, whose foundational goal must be to insure those who are not sick. Over 43 million Americans, disproportionately children, do not have access to health insurance.
Fertility: (from “to carry, to bear“) synonyms: fecund, fruitful, prolific. “Producing or having the power to produce offspring or fruit.” “The quality or state of being fertile.” Seen as a quality of black women, poor women, third world women.
Fetus: A cultural icon, an object of public obsession. “Matter” to be acted on technologically. “An unborn or unhatched vertebrate esp. after attaining the basic structural plan of its kind; a developing human usually from three months after conception to birth.”
Flesh Technologies: Alternatives to, or interventions into “natural” reproduction and growth. For example:
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Gamete: (from Gr. “husband, marriage“) The “sex” cells (egg, sperm) in both men or women. ” A mature germ cell posessing a haploid chromosome set and capable of initiating formation of a new individual by fusion with another gamete.” In “natural” (heterosexual) reproduction egg gametes fuse with sperm gametes to form the embryo. Gender:Gender Assonance/Dissonance:Gender Indeterminacy:Gender Performance:Genetics: A branch of biology dealing with the heredity and variation of organisms. Previously viewed as a subspecialty of medicine; now some in the fields of biotechnology and medicine view medicine as a subspecialty of genetics.Genism -or-
Geneticization -or-
Gene Mania: The accelerating tendency to find genetic explanations for complex medical and social conditions. According to Jeremy Rifkin (The Biotech Century) and other cultural critics, the ideological component of the biotech revolution. Tends to treat illness and other problems as the result of fixed genetic traits, ignoring the fact that inherited genetic conditions are responsible for only a small fraction of disease, or that most mutations to our genes result from environmental influences. Previous pendulum-swings toward this end of the scale in the centuries-old “heredity vs. environment” debate have coincided with periods of increased social inequity. (See also “Eugenics“.)
Genism profitably shifts the focus away from such concerns as economic injustice or environmental pollution.
Haploid: (Gr. “single“) A cell with half the number of chromosomes of a regular (somatic) cell. A germ cell which is ready for mating with another. Hermaphroditism:Human Genome Project: International project to make a complete map of all 100,000 chromosomes and their genes. Scheduled to be completed in 2003.
Infertility: Often ascribed to female deviance. Generally depicted as a middle-class white issue.
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Machine Life:
Malthusianism: Ideology promulgated by 18th century preacher-turned-economist Thomas Malthus, that unless population is “checked” by moral restraint, disease, famine, or war, widespread poverty and degredation inevitably result; enormously influential on public policy shaped by elites ever since (often to justify poverty, famine, and war) since it takes the rich and systems of inequality off the hook and makes the poor responsible for poverty. Ex: allows elite technocrats such as Robert McNamara of World Bank fame to blame, for the civil war in El Salvador on “overpopulation” rather than extreme disparities of wealth and violent suppression of any peaceful attempt at reform. (Ignores even basic demographic facts, such as that El Salvador has a smaller population than Massachusetts, or that the poorest regions of the world often suffer from underpopulation.) Selectively applied by proponents of population control and First World “development planners” only to the world’s poor majority. The resulting injustice is that “we” have the right to reproductive choice; “they” do not. “On an individual level, has intimately and negatively affected millions of women--“Third” and “First” world. (Betsy Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control.) See also Eugenics.
Managed Care: Any system of health care finanacing and delivery that relies on financial incentives and the monitoring of medical decisions to “control medical costs” and limit use of services. “[Puts] providers in the untenable position of making decisions about care in terms of the impact on their salaries and employment as well as company profit. [These plans claim] to cover “medically necessary” services, but all may cancel policies or deny needed care in the face of serious illness.” (Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Our Bodies Ourselves.)
Military/Medical Complex:
Mutation: Shape changing. Significant and basic alteration. Deviant morphology. “A relatively permanent change in hereditary material involving either a physical change in chromosome relations or a biochemical change in genetic code material.”
(NAF) National Abortion Federation: An association of abortion providers, individuals, and organizations working in reproductive health and abortion rights. NAF’s toll-free hotline gives referrals for abortion services and funding. Hotline: (800)772-9100; Canada (800)424-2280.
NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League): Works to protect a woman’s right to choose in the legislatures, the courts, and at the clinics. Its campus organizing project assists young activists.
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Operation Rescue:
Preformation: “The now discredited theory that every germ cell contains the organism of its kind fully formed and that development consists merely in increase in size.” Preformationists divided into “ovists” and “spermist” depending on whether they believed the egg or the sperm carried the microscopic form of the complete organism. See Epigenesis.
PGM (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis): A new technique with blatent references to the practice of eugenics, used to separate and select desireable embryos from the undesireable. “
PGD: combines the existing technology of IVF and micromanipulation (ICSI, embryo biopsy) with molecular genetic techniques used in clinical practice, and allows the selection of normal embryos for transfer thereby reducing the possibility of establishing an abnormal pregnancy. Currently, the program offers diagnosis of certain chromosome abnormalities prior to implantation for patients at high risk. In addition, testing is being developed for patients at risk of transmitting X-linked disorders, autosomal gene defects, and chromosomes translocations.” See Eugenics.
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Recombinant Genetics (Gene Splicing): the recombination of genes to produce individuals with desirable or mutant characteristics; experimental frankensteinian science.Replication: Reproduction by code replication. The ideal individual who can be perpetuated without change or mutation from generation to generation. The return of the same.
Selective Reduction: Removal of selected embryos from uterus in cases of multiple implantations in order to reduce number of offspring.Sex: The biological quality of femaleness and maleness. A pleasurable human activity. Activity which can result in reproduction.
Single Payer: A healthcare system similar to public utilities in which one national, centralized nonprofit utility would be responsible for collecting and disbursing the money needed to pay medical care bills, thus eliminating the need for the private insurance industry. Similar to Canada’s system, which covers everyone in the country for much less than the U.S. now spends, allows choice of providers, and produces fewer very sick people. According to many independant analysts, saves the most money and provides the most equitable care because it eliminates the 20 to 25% of premiums now wasted on giant insurance company profits, and by ensuring access to care, saves through prevention of illness.
Smart Birth: (“smartness is intelligence that is cost efficient, planner responsible, user friendly, and unerringly obedient to its programmer’s designs” Andrew Ross, The New Smartness) Quality controlled birth employing biotechnology and cyborg embodiment.
Somatic: “of, relating to, or affecting the body, especially as distinguished from germ plasm or the psyche.” OK, no mixing of germ cells and psychic stuff with the body. Body as body.
Somatic Cell: “One of the cells of the body that compose the tissues, organs, and parts of that individual other than the gametic cells.”
Sterilization: A permanent method of birth control, sterilization involves cutting the fallopian tubes in women (a tubal ligation) or the vas deferns in men (a vasectomy.) Sterilization abuse--when women are sterilized without their consent--continues to be a problem in many parts of the world. Enforced sterilization was one of the favorite tools of the early eugenicists, and continues to be pushed by advocates of population control on poor women or those deemed “unfit“. In the U.S., women living in poverty, or those who are Black, Puerto Rican, Chicana, or Native American, are more likely to be sterilized than women from the same or higher socioeconomic classes. Hysterectomy, a major surgical procedure with risk of mortality or complication 10 to 100 times greater than tubal ligation, is unnecessary for sterilization; yet of the million hysterectomies done each year, 1 in 5 is done for sterilization purposes only.
Surrogacy:
Technoscience:
Tissue Engineering: Laboratory growing of new tissues and organs from starter cells. Human skin can most easily be regrown from grafts. Livers are being grown in the lab on inorganic scaffolding.
Transgenic Species: A tomato with human genes. Transgenic pigs whose organs can be transplanted into humans. A potato whose DNA has been genetically crossed with the DNA of an antifungal bacteria.
WAC (Women’s Action Coalition):
Zygote:
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