Social constructions of non-invasive prenatal testing: The new right tool for the job?

<p dir="ltr">Since 2011, non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) has experienced widespread uptake around the world. While significant academic attention has been given to the clinical, legal, and ethical dimensions of NIPT, there remains little investigation of its social aspects.</p><p dir="ltr">This thesis presents findings from a qualitative examination of NIPT in Australia. Drawing from a range of empirical data, including interviews with healthcare professionals, media coverage, advertising material, and online discussions, I analyse how understandings of NIPT’s technical, clinical, social, and ethical workability have been discursively constructed. Gaining insight into the perspectives of different social groups connected to NIPT is critical for better understanding the social shaping of new biomedical developments.</p><p dir="ltr">I find that, while individual and collective accounts of the value of NIPT are dynamic and heterogeneous, three broad positions can be identified: that NIPT is the right tool for the right job; that NIPT is the wrong tool for the right job; and, that NIPT is the right tool for the wrong job.</p><p dir="ltr">My analysis draws from social worlds theory to investigate who is connected to NIPT and how they talk about it. I complement this with compatible constructivist theories focussing on the intersection of people, discourse and biomedicine. I approach discourse as something that does things and through which things are done. I build on work on promissory discourses and the sociology of expectations, and explore the performative capacity of discourse to propel (and constrain) action around this new biomedical object.</p><p dir="ltr">Building on studies on biomedicalisation, I also examine the wider sociotechnical and cultural elements conditioning and reflected in accounts of NIPT. I focus on the way biomedicalisation trends (e.g. commercialisation, technoscientisation) and countertrends, have manifested within the Australian context, highlighting the broader conditions shaping NIPT’s development. I also examine instances of resistance against biomedicalization, drawing attention to the ways in which NIPT’s use has been both practically and discursively contested.</p><p dir="ltr">This study contributes to academic scholarship by interrogating how biomedicalisation functions outside of the US and providing new insight into how NIPT has come to be manifoldly understood within Australia.</p>