Navigating uncertainties of death: Minimally Invasive Autopsy Technology in global health

Abstract

Global health practitioners and policymakers have become increasingly vocal about the complex challenges of identifying and quantifying the causes of death of the world’s poorest people. To address this cause-of-death uncertainty and to minimise longstanding sensitivities about full autopsies, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have been one of the foremost advocates of minimally invasive autopsy technology (MIA). MIA involves using biopsy needles to collect samples from key organs and body fluids; as such, it is touted as potentially more acceptable and less invasive than a complete autopsy, which requires opening the cadaver. In addition, MIA is considered a good means of collecting accurate bodily samples and can provide the crucial information needed to address cause-of-death uncertainty. In this paper, we employ qualitative data to demonstrate that while MIA technology has been introduced as a solution to the enduring cause-of-death uncertainty, the development and deployment of technologies such as these always constitute interventions in complex social and moral worlds; in this respect, they are both the solutions to and the causes of new kinds of uncertainties. We deconstruct the ways in which those new dimensions of uncertainty operate at different levels in the global health context.

Keywords

• uncertainty
• minimally invasive autopsy
• minimally invasive tissue sampling
• global health
• ethics
• technology