Challenging Medicine: Law, Resistance, and the Cultural Politics of Childbirth

Whereas most sociolegal studies concerned with hegemony and resistance focus on the resistances of ordinary citizens in everyday life, this article focuses on the development of a particular social movement—the alternative birth movement—and analyzes the process by which this movement emerged and has achieved significant legislative victories. The analysis makes several contributions to the literatures on hegemony, resistance, and the law. First, by demonstrating the importance of medicine's assertion of its authority for the expansion and mobilization of the alternative birth movement, we show that the mobilization of the law by a dominant group may trigger the emergence of social movements seeking to resist hegemonic understandings and arrangements. At the same time, by examining how birth activists' organizational resources developed over time and were rendered meaningful in legislative debates, our study demonstrates the importance of avoiding dichotomous conceptions of structure and culture. In addition, by analyzing culture as a process of meaning-making rather than an independent and hierarchical set of values, the analysis shows how cultural and legal hegemony—even that of modern medicine—may be destabilized, even as it sets the terms of the effort to destabilize it and shapes the nature of the hegemony that will replace it.     

Validation of Half‐Reaction Amplification Using Promega PowerPlex® 16*

Abstract: DNA amplification is a fundamental yet costly process used in DNA analysis. This study evaluated half‐reaction amplification (12.5, 12, and 13 uL) using the Promega Powerplex^® 16 Kit with the hope of reducing sample analysis costs by half. A sensitivity study was completed, along with the testing of various blood stain samples including those with low (<0.40 ng) and high DNA concentrations (>3.0 ng), peak height imbalances, and allelic drop‐out. Also, 467 samples submitted to the MUFSC laboratory for testing were analyzed. Results indicate that half‐reaction amplification produced higher quality profiles than full‐reactions. Average peak heights increased by 85%, peak height imbalances improved, and drop‐out was eliminated in 75.8% of samples. Only eight of 467 case samples required re‐amplification, a success rate of 94% was observed, and the repeat rate decreased significantly. Finally, a DNA input of 0.25–1.0 ng is ideal for half‐reaction amplification.