"Savior Siblings" and Their Effect on Families

The right to make decisions regarding your own body is an intrinsic human right; whether deciding to participate in experimental studies or undergo surgery, each person has to the right to be in charge of those decisions. What happens then, when the situation becomes more complex, when deciding not to undergo surgery would cost a family member his or her health, and possibly his or her life.

Parents with sick and dying children have begun recently turning to a new, controversial method to find donor matches, in vitro fertilization. Parents “select an embryo free from serious genetic disease and simultaneously select for a tissue match” (M Spriggs). This is done because family members, and especially siblings, are the best chance of finding a genetic match to the sick child. Once a genetic match is found, treatments such as organ donations or blood transfusions become available as options. This issue was recently brought to the attention of the public through the movie adaptation of Jodi Picoult’s novel, My Sister’s Keeper. In the movie, 11-year-old Anna sues her parent’s for medical emancipation in order to stop a planned kidney surgery. This represents one major ethical consideration; why is it fair to the healthy child to constantly undergo surgery? Surgery itself is a risk, complications occur all the time even in simple surgeries. Children such as Anna also miss school when undergoing surgeries and are also precluded from activities such as participation in sports after select surgeries.

When you balance this with the fact that without these life-saving operations their sick family member could potentially die, a Catch 22 situation arises. It isn’t the child’s fault he or she is sickened with cancer or some other affliction and needs surgery, but it isn’t the other child’s fault either. Looking further into Anna’s hypothetical story, the reason she even filed the lawsuit was on behalf of her sister Kate. Kate was tired of the surgeries that only temporarily helped her live, and most importantly was done with watching her little sister selflessly sacrifice herself and her body whenever Kate needed more operations. Children such as Kate also deserve a voice in these situations, because among other considerations, it is hard to watch a sibling go through surgery specifically because he or she is sick.

In a desperate situation, parents want to do everything they can to help heal their children, but is it right to help heal one child by sacrificing another’s health, especially when generally neither child gets a say in the matter? The structure of the situation presents problems for all involved. The whole family dynamics shift once a “savior sibling” is born. Most of the time the focus rests of the new child and the parents, but the rest of the family is also affected and must be considered before a drastic measure such as this is undertaken.

Resources relevant to my post:
Picoult, Jodi. My Sister's Keeper. Simon and Schuster Adult Group, 2005. Print.
Spriggs, M. "Is conceiving a child to benefit another against the interests of the new child?" Journal of Medical Ethics (2005). Journal of Medical Ethics. Web. 27 Sept. 2009. .