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Healthcare Ethics: Savior Siblings

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Healthcare Ethics: Savior Siblings
A current ethical debate in the world of healthcare is Savior siblings. A savior sibling is a child who is born to be genetically compatible with a sibling that is suffering from a life-threatening disease. The child is born to provide either organ or cell transplant, and/or blood transfusions for the ill sibling. The child is created through in vitro fertilization (IVF), once the embryo goes through preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), it helps identify genetic defects within the embryos. This arises many ethic concerns for people, like whether or not savior siblings should be allowed, and how far would one go to save the sick child’s life. Each branch of Philosophy has their own view and opinions, that …show more content…

Consequentialist believe that morality is about producing the right overall consequences, and that the action brings about either happiness, freedom or survival of species. Utilitarianism is an example of consequentialism that maximizes utility (happiness). The difference between utilitarianism and consequentialism is that a utilitarian overlooks justice, as long as an utilitarian can maximize pleasure they would do whatever it takes. Consequentialist enjoy maximizing pleasure like a utilitarian, but they also take into account autonomy and justice. A consequentialist believes that determining good by measuring the outcome, if the good for all in the act is greater than the bad for all in the act, it is deemed morally good. A consequentialist looks at the pros and cons of a situation and then takes action. Although consequentialists and utilitarian’s have some differences, when talking about savior siblings their ethics line up, and can be used interchangeably. They would agree that a savior sibling would be morally permissible because it maximizes utility, the family and child are both happy because their child now has better chance at survival. No matter the metal/physical wellbeing of the child, as long as the act generates maximum pleasure. Unlike a Kantian, a utilitarian would do as much as they can to bring about pleasure, even if it meant putting the second child in danger/pain to save the first child’s life. Many of the procedures that the child has to undergo are invasive and painful, along with physical pain comes the psychological pain the child may go through. Many savior siblings tend to be psychologically effected from being a donor sibling, they are effected by knowing that if their sibling didn’t need a donor match they would not exist, many savior siblings lack the attention they need because they are a secondary thought to their older ill sibling. Plenty of studies show that savoir siblings grow

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The idea of creating a child that is a genetic match to another to act as a donor is very debatable. Some believe that man should not act like God and try to create a specific kind of person. Others believe that as the parents are not choosing an eye or hair color or some other inconsequential characteristic that there isn't much of a problem. In this book, Anna was originally created in order to use the umbilical cord blood. It was never planned for her to act as a donor to her sister for her entire life.

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