Umbilical cord blood and the placenta – a rich source of stem cells - is the fulcrum around which cutting-edge therapies in regenerative medicine are being imagined. Cord blood came to occupy a place of prominence within modern medicine once it was conclusively established that it contained blood-forming stem cells, which could potentially be used to treat diseases that required stem cell transplants obtained from the bone marrow. This discovery led to the burgeoning of cord blood banks, globally, which market themselves as institutions that allow parents the opportunity to insure the future health of their offspring. Non-biomedical epistemes, have always held cord blood and the placenta in high regard, critical in securing the health of the new-born and mother, in the immediate moments after birth, which is then believed to have far reaching consequences for the health of the new born throughout their life course. In both instances, there is a framing of risk, based on an assessment of potential disease that may afflict one in the future. The transitioning of cord blood and the placenta, from ‘waste’ to ‘gold’, in modern medical discourse has taken shape within the larger neoliberal logic that views health as a commodity, giving rise to distinct understandings of risk and risk mitigation that play out in the free market. In this paper, based on research in the city of Pune, India, I will contrast how these two sets of practices around cord blood and the placenta, located in and emerging out of different epistemic registers/readings of the body, contribute to and complicate our understanding of ‘health risk’ and what kinds of implications they may have for how we imagine our individual and collective ‘future/s’.
