CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In both the expert and mass media cultures to which they simultaneouslybelong, ova and sperm have come to figure prominently as entitiesof potentiality, of expansion of the vital capabilities of bodies and of regenerationof their exhausted capacities. This article looks into the practices ofgamete exchange in Argentina to argue, however, a different story. It contendsthat for all the good potentiality that gametes have come to represent,they are also entangled in webs of risk. They can be extracted too much ortoo often, decrease their provider?s expectation of good health, or createwrongful (i.e. incestuous and/or endogamous) bodily links between individuals.Drawing on analyses of the actual use of statistical measures in the clinic;and of ways of understanding kinship that are particular to Argentina, the articlesuggests that the handling of gametes as risky substances may ultimatelywork to produce the risks that it only aims to prevent. The study broughttogether the literature on kinship and science studies in order to frame theproblematic of kinship and risk management in technoscience.

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