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 …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