The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism

Abstract

risk of childhood obesity. Valdez argues that we do not need this type of science to know who is sick now nor to predict who will get sick in the future—we already know. This is what Valdez calls ‘‘epigenetic foreclosure,’’ which is essentially the insights gained and lost by examining some, but not all, epigenetic variables using traditional evidence-based medicine. Weighing the Future also gives readers an interesting glimpse into clinical trial recruitment. The trials under study had goals to recruit a diverse sample of overweight women, yet recruitment did not acknowledge the history of racism in medical experimentation nor societal fat-shaming. We also saw why people chose to enroll in prenatal nutritional clinical trials; these people wanted support in enduring social and medical stigmas associated with being overweight, diverse, and pregnant in a fat-phobic, racist society (p. 138). Yet, by enrolling in these trials, the participants subject themselves to extra surveillance and management practices that are not devoid of these stigmatizing cultural conceptions. Readers are also exposed to methodological issues such as the types of data that are collected in clinical trials (e.g., Valdez notes that certain aspects of epigenetics are selectively ignored) and how they are classified. Valdez also captures the complexity of trying to categorize race and ethnicity into distinct and quantifiable categories. These data collection and classification decisions are made by the PI and research team; thus, depending on the study, different data could be collected, or the same data that are collected could be classified differently (e.g., behavioral versus biological, when the two may be interrelated). What data are collected and how they are classified moves research in certain directions, including ultimate findings and suggestions for potential interventions. These data can also be used or sold for other medical research. This book could be of interest for graduate courses in public health, science and medicine studies, medical sociology, health sciences, and race or ethnic studies. Readers are left with the knowledge that the trials Valdez observed, and others, did not find conclusive results on effects of pregnancy weight gain on offspring; yet many scientists maintain their theoretical orientations and shift those to further surveilling preand post-pregnancy eating behaviors. Thus, in our current iteration of scientific knowledge, individual bodies remain the focus, rather than larger environmental or epigenetic explanatory variables. This is exactly why we need this book and need to continue to embed social science in health studies.