Doctoral Dissertation Research: Emerging Milk Markets: Human Milk Banking, Sharing, and Technoscience

理解一些生物制品如何以及为什么进入市场是科学技术研究和相关领域以及政策制定者的一个重要问题。许多关于生物制品商品化的研究都是在生物制品商品化发生和产品财务上市之后进行的。此外，生物制品的性别含量往往没有得到充分研究。这项研究通过分析一个未来很大程度上未知的性别生物市场信息来填补这些空白。具体而言，科学家在开发生物医学产品和程序（包括干细胞恢复、癌症和抗菌治疗）中使用母乳的新情况与非正式母乳银行和母乳共享进行了比较，以研究生物产品的金融和其他市场是如何转变的。该研究还调查了性别如何影响生物医学科学中买卖的生物产品的商品化。证据来自对科学家、卫生保健提供者、捐赠者、接受者、母乳库人员和母乳共享网站人员的深入访谈和人种学观察，以及政策和其他文件和网站。更广泛地说，这项研究解决了涉及母乳市场的重要社会伦理问题，包括捐赠者是否应该为母乳付费，母乳银行是否应该盈利，母乳市场应该在多大程度上受到监管，以及所谓的多余母乳的最佳利用。其他更广泛的影响包括政策指导和培养研究生。

Understanding how and why some biological products come to be marketed is an important question for science and technology studiesand related fields, and for policymakers. Much of the research on biological product commodification is carried out after commodification occurs and the products are financially marketed. Moreover, the gendered content of biological products is often understudied. This study fills those gaps by analyzing a gendered biological market in formation whose future is largely unknown. Specifically, scientists' emerging use of breast milk in the development of biomedical products and procedures, including stem cell recovery, and cancer and antibacterial treatments, is compared to informal breast milk banking and breast milk sharing to examine how financial and other markets for biological products are transformed. The study also investigates how gender shapes the commodification of biological products that are bought and sold in the biomedical sciences. Evidence is drawn from in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations with scientists, health care providers, donors, recipients, milk bank personnel and milk sharing website personnel, and from policy and other documents and websites.More broadly, this study addresses socially important ethical issues involved in breast milk markets, including whether donors should be paid for breast milk, whether a profit should be made in milk banking, to what degree markets in breast milk should be regulated, and the best uses of so-called excess breast milk. Other broader impacts include policy guidance, and training a graduate student.