Rumor as ethical vernacular: Ebola and the womb in eastern Congo.

Abstract

The position of pregnant women in clinical research remains a topic of international ethical debate. Yet, the reflections of actual and potential trial participants, including pregnant women themselves, often remain absent. Following a policy reversal in 2019, pregnant women were eligible to participate in a second Ebola vaccine trial during an epidemic in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This article follows how this decision was perceived in Goma, a city in the DRC, the meanings and functions of the rumors that emerged about reproductive health, and how these rumors influenced pregnant women's experience of the trial. I argue that the womb became a site to discuss broader biopolitical anxieties about collective survival, but that rumors also became a vehicle for ethical debate amid uncertainty. Ethical debates about medical research continue locally through other ethical vernaculars- like rumors- and center on contested ideas of acceptable risk, shaped by collective historical experiences.