'Placental spaces’: the social history of investments in a regional placenta tissue collection

The aim of this project is to develop a socio-cultural understanding of the acquisition, storage, value and use of the ALSPAC regional human placental tissue collection. It will contribute to development of a larger study of the bioethics of human placental tissue use and collection in bioscience research and in clinical practice. The collection may be seen as representing a significant investment by those who created it (donors and scientists) and the research will investigate:

1.How is the value of placental tissue is understood by women participants in ALSPAC and those who created and curate it?

2.How is the value of the placental tissue collection shaped by technologies of preservation and changing conceptions of research utility?

3.Does the regional nature of the placental tissue collected for ALSPAC raise specific kinds of social and ethical concerns for consent, access, and use?

Funding has been provided by the Wellcome Trust to support the costs of conducting interviews with managers, originators, and any users of the collection and interviews with women participants in ALSPAC who were asked to donate their placenta to the collection. This research has been approved by the ALSPAC Ethics committee.