When craft kicks back: Embryo culture as knowledge production in the context of the transnational fertility industry

Abstract

The multibillion-dollar fertility industry promotes standardization in in vitro fertilization laboratories. Transnational pharmaceutical and biotechnological giants distribute a wide range of fertility products, from embryo culture mediums and incubator technologies to add-ons such as time-lapse embryo monitoring. These technologies are designed to standardize and automate knowledge production regarding embryonic viability. More effective knowledge production enables the more effective selection of embryos for transfer, which in turn leads to more future babies and enables economic scaling-up. Drawing on two multi-sited ethnographic studies at eight fertility clinics in Finland during 2013–2020, this article discusses how knowledge about embryos is produced in the processes and practices of embryo culture. We argue that automation and standardization in clinical practice are not always perceived as economically desirable. Sometimes standard technologies do not replace hands-on knowledge production, although they may transform it. The technologies are also perceived as modifying the object of knowledge itself in undesired or unnecessary ways. In such cases, concerns are raised regarding the best interests of patients, embryos and future babies, who might be better served by masterful laboratory craftwork. We conclude that embryo culture is not only a site of knowledge production – one that aims to make babies and parents through standard and craftwork knowledge practices – but also a site of multiple bio-economies of assisted reproduction, some of which resist automation and standardization.