The emergence and use of expanded carrier screening in gamete donation: A new form of repro-genetic selection.

With the continued expansion and commercialisation of fertility treatments, the selection and matching of donors have become more sophisticated and technologised. As part of this landscape, new form of genetic screening: 'expanded carrier screening' (ECS) is being offered as a technique to avoid the risk of donors passing on genetic conditions to future offspring. Allowing donors to be tested for hundreds of genetic conditions simultaneously, ECS marks a considerable departure from traditional 'family history' models of screening, which rely on an individual's knowledge of family health.

Making patients political: Narrating, curating, enacting, and navigating the 'idealised policy patient'.

In this article we develop the concept of the 'idealised policy patient' to contribute to a better understanding of patient-family activism and the mechanisms through which powerful and persuasive patient narratives are facilitated and mobilised. The context through which we explore the idealised policy patient is the UK debates about the legalisation of mitochondrial donation, which primarily took place between 2011 and 2015. In our example, the idealised policy patient was constructed around a culturally persuasive narrative of patient suffering, where mitochondrial donation was presented as a desirable and ethical solution.

Silences, omissions and oversimplification? The UK debate on mitochondrial donation.

Drawing on scholarship from ignorance studies, this paper uses the case of the UK debates on mitochondrial donation (2012-2015) to emphasize the importance of deploying an analysis of ignorance that goes beyond medical and safety concerns when scrutinizing debates or campaigns around new reproductive technologies. In contrast to what happened with previous reproductive health treatments or drugs, the potential medical risks of mitochondrial donation were explicitly acknowledged and examined during its public and parliamentary discussions. However, I show, using the concepts of 'acknowledged unknowns' and 'ignored knowns', how the attention drawn to the medical risks contributed to obscuring the assessment of its economic and social impacts by silencing key knowledge regarding the limitations of mitochondrial donation in relation to the potential beneficiaries, the scope of the techniques, their alternatives and their costs.

Ideals, negotiations and gender roles in gay and lesbian co-parenting arrangements.

This paper engages with the complex gender and parental dynamics experienced in the context of co-parenting arrangements. These arrangements, based on mutual agreement, involve people who commit to raising a child together, possibly with their respective partners. These family forms are usually pursued to avoid what is perceived as the uncertainty surrounding alternative assisted reproductive options such as donor insemination or surrogacy, and to allow the child to have two biological and sexually differentiated parental figures.

Mitochondrial donation, patient engagement and narratives of hope.

This article develops the sociology of hope and patient engagement by exploring how patients' perceptions and actions are shaped by narratives of hope surrounding the clinical introduction of novel reproductive techniques. In 2015, after extensive public debates, the UK became the first country to legalise a mitochondrial donation technique aimed at preventing the transmission of inherited disorders. The article draws on the accounts of twenty-two women of reproductive age who are at risk of having a child with mitochondrial disease and would be the potential target of the technique.

Mitochondrial Replacement Techniques: Who are the Potential Users and will they Benefit?

In February 2015 the UK became the first country to legalise high-profile mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRTs), which involve the creation of offspring using genetic material from three individuals. The aim of these new cell reconstruction techniques is to prevent the transmission of maternally inherited mitochondrial disorders to biological offspring. During the UK debates, MRTs were often positioned as a straightforward and unique solution for the 'eradication' of mitochondrial disorders, enabling hundreds of women to have a healthy, biologically-related child.