Mx Courtney McMahon1
1Monash University, , Australia
Biography:
I am a PhD candidate in the Monash Bioethics Centre researching the translation of epigenetics into antenatal care and broader social discourses on responsibility. I am interested in reproductive and feminist ethics, moral responsibility, research and public health ethics, and conceptions of autonomy and vulnerability.
Abstract:
Epigenetics is often characterised as a breakthrough scientific field demonstrating the interplay between genes and the environment. At the forefront of research in this field is the 'foetal programming' hypothesis, which investigates how maternal behaviours such as diet influence foetal health via changes in gene expression. Recent bioethical debates have speculated whether there is any 'maternal epigenetic responsibility' generated by such findings, for instance to avoid harmful dietary behaviours during and even prior to pregnancy. However, current discourses on maternal epigenetic responsibility have largely overlooked problems with establishing causality in the field of epigenetics and DOHaD, particularly in relation to human studies of foetal programming. This is especially concerning given how clinical, public health, and popular debates on epigenetics increasingly attribute the brunt of responsibility for epigenetics to women, whilst ignoring the role fathers and broader structural factors play in offspring health. In this presentation, I investigate some of the central difficulties in establishing a causal relationship between maternal behaviours and later-life offspring outcomes in the context of epigenetics and DOHaD. I argue that these difficulties undermine a philosophical account of maternal epigenetic responsibility, and furthermore reveal the failure of bioethics debates to adequately engage with the uncertainties of foetal programming science. As such, current debates on maternal epigenetic responsibility run the risk of unjustifiably attributing moral responsibility to women on the basis of epigenetic effects whose existence is still putative in nature, and of contributing to a widespread tendency to hold women responsible for offspring health.