Against the Domination of Human Life by an Expertise with Antenatal Testing Technology

Abstract

　 Discussion on the social implication of antenatal testing technology has become active in Japan, yet again, since the announcement that provision of the “new antenatal test” will start in the end of August，2012. Based on the critiques on “medicalization” in the field of medical sociology and “domination of human life by expertise” in the field of Science and Technology Studies, the paper argues that the prenatal testing technology is the devise for medical expertise to dominate human life. In order to against this invasion of our autonomy for human life, it is necessary to relativize medical expertise within various forms of knowledge about human life that exist in society. Knowledge based on the experience of people, whom medical expertise categorizes as “anomaly”, is especially important in this context. The paper lastly introduces a project purporting to share the experience of people with trisomy of chromosome 21, one of the targets of prenatal testing technologies.