In Vitro Sibling Case

In Summer 2003 a small family living in the United Kingdom gave birth to a beautiful little boy named Jamie Whitaker, Jamie was born to help save his four year old brother Charlie’s life. Charlie suffered from Diamond Blackfan Anemia (DBA) a disease that affects 700 people a year and is treated with excruciating painful daily injections and many days spent in the hospital. Jamie was one of the very first babies born through, Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis with Human Leukocyte Antigen he is known as a savior sibling. Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) with Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) is when; parents use in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to chose embryos that do not have any genetic defects. This is also used with a screening matching

Another interesting article found was that it supported in-vitro fertilization with PGD and HLA but suggested that they change the laws so you can have the baby with a genetic match to help cure your sick child, but you must wait till that baby “Savior Sibling” is of 18 or legal right to choose their own medical decisions until they can be allowed to help their sibling “Sick child’s” life by giving anything they can offer to them. Which is an interesting suggestion, but the article also states that in doing that, their umbilical cord would not be as viable from when they were 18 as they would even at one or two years, or even that by they time they waited 18 years to take any medical treatments with either sibling, it may be too late for the sick child, that their disease may have progressed to a point were it is not as treatable, or even to the point of death. Which would ultimately mean that the PGD with HLA (Which is costly) might have been for no reasons

Every family has different circumstances, every child weather sick or not is his or her own person that will make his/her own choices. As long as a parent is not intentionally doing harm to their child and still has both children’s best interest in mind then we should let the family choose what is best medically for their children. Their may obviously be cases where a higher authority may have to step in with courts and legal systems, to save children that need it, but I strongly believe that a parents main concern is the health and happiness of their children. A parent would not destroy the life of one child to save another child’s. There may be that 10% of the population that are not right in the head that we would need to mediate and take legal precautions, but there are a lot more parents who will look after the care of the whole