Paper short abstract:

By analysing donor recruitment practices and how cord blood is materially processed both in public and private UCB banking, this paper develops a new and critical notion of social embeddedness of UCB biovalue exploitation in emergent forms of motherhood and family relations

Paper long abstract:

Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is collected at birth and stored in biobanks for being used as a source of hematopoietic stem cells. Two main models of UCB banking are in place: a system of public UCB banks collecting and distributing this tissue for healthcare needs and a sector of commercial UCB banks offering to mothers and parents the opportunity to privately store the UCB of a newborn for future possible family uses. UCB banking thus represents a paradigmatic case of the existence of two different bioeconomies: a public redistributive economy (based on free donations) and a market economy of private biomedical services. In the bioethics literature, the different biovalues attributed to UCB (as public resource vs private good) are linked to a moral discourse regarding the embeddedness of the two UCB bioeconomies. While public banking is embedded in social relations of solidarity, cohesion and thus promotes the common good; private banking appears as disembedded and substituting social relations with impersonal market transactions. By analysing the practices of donor recruitment, and in particular how UCB is materially processed in both public and private banking, this talk shows how this discourse adopts a notion of social embeddedness that is empirically and analytically untenable. I focus on emerging forms of motherhood and family relations involved in the management of UCB, to argue for a new and critical notion of social embeddedness of UCB biovalue exploitation in both public and private banking