Shanti finds this medical breakthrough disgusting.
Five healthy babies have been born to provide stem cells for siblings with serious non-heritable conditions. This is the first time “saviour siblings” have been created to treat children whose condition is not genetic, says the medical team.
In other words, parents are having a child just to provide stem cells to an earlier child. Earlier, doing so had a one in five chance, i.e. you needed to have five children on an average before you got a kid with the right genetic makeup for your elder kid. Now, the chance has increased to 98%. I think though I cannot be sure, that technology has improved the chance of detection at an early stage, so you still need to abort an average of four foetuses very early in the cycle, i.e. within a month of the pregnancy.
So why does Shanti find it abhorrent?
Has anyone once stopped to consider what kind of people are these babies going to turn into when they find out that they were designed to fulfill the needs of another person and not for themselves?
Well, how would you feel if your parents told you that you were brought to life to give life to your elder brother or sister? Would you feel used or will that make you two siblngs closer to each other?
See what a difference phrasing makes? That’s a good reason not to base your ethical choices on what you find personally repugnant. Shit is repugnant. Cowdung isn’t, for many Indians.
Or look at it another way, if Shanti feels so much for those five kids who are not her own, so what is the chance that the parents are going to have the attitude “You’ve served your purpose. You are no longer needed.” towards their own kid? Is that how a mother’s mind works?
Parents have children for many reasons, to stave off a divorce, to have a heir, to replace an elder brother, to fulfill their own dreams. Sometimes they find that these expectations cannot be fulfilled. Most don’t abandon their child for that reason. Even if they have a child for short term reasons like staving off a divorce, they don’t abandon their child once they find that divorce is no longer a possibility (or even if the divorce happens anyway) Yes, some parents do all these things, and they deserve our contempt. But there is no good reason to criticize parents for having children “just for a particular purpose”
Likewise, it is not a crushing burden for children to learn that their parents have or have had some expectations from them. The kids will grow up fine.
If anything, it is those abortions I am worried about. If I read right, the parents will have to abort an average of four out of five of their pregnancies very early in their cycle. Now this is really an ethical grey area for me (though not a legal grey area). A foetus is just a bunch of tissues. A child is a miniature human being. At some point in the pregnancy I will stop thinking of the foetus as a foetus and start thinking of it as a child. Unfortunately, not being religious, I cannot think that the soul enters the body at some instant in time. It is a gradual process. So at one month, I will have no qualms aborting the foetus. At 2 months? 3 months? 6 months? 8 and a half months? (So do I believe that abortion should be illegal? No I don’t, but only because I believe that laws should be based on sharp dividing lines, and the point of birth is the one through which such a line can be drawn. But that won’t stop me from being contemptuous of a mother who decides to abort a 7 month old foetus casually, without some compelling reason to counterbalance the wrong. )
But I digress. At one month (which is what we are talking of) I don’t see any ethical issues.
Ravi,
I agree people have children for different reasons, but when you are telling one child, “hey, we loved your older sibling so much that we created you to fix him”, you are automatically creating a hierarchy in which the first child is superior to the one created to help the child. You might phrase it as a “We love you too” or “You are a life-saver”, but the second child is going to feel like the only reason for his birth was the older child’s need – not genuine affection.
Thanks for blogging that, I was kind of running out of steam on Shanti’s board.
I am pretty sure that a lot of us are the result of unexpected accidents. If my parents where to tell me today, that they wheren’t really sure about me and contemplated abortion, it’s not going to make me love them any less. So “purpose” is bullshit, as far as I am concerned. What counts is whether they loved me afterwards.
Even if someone was conceived for a particular reason, why does the child need to know? If you have to tell him/them, do it when they are all grown up and ready to deal with it.
Shanthi, is this minor bit worth losing a child’s life over? No way. Are you suggesting that parents throw away a much improved chance at saving their child’s life? And I do believe that if it came down to it, you would do the same for your child, and I mean it in the best possible way.
Here is something that I read sometime back about cloning which is very interesting and informative
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/baby/clon_silver.html
This is in no way related to what is being discussed here. I like the way Dr.Lee Silver explains what really constitutes an individual(and what individuality really means): It is the genetic material, environment in which one grows up and the individual’s consciousness that together make an individual. But, I don’t quite agree with him when he says that cloning creats a divide between the rich and the poor etc.
I dont believe any child is an accident. I think that they are all born for a reason by God. I dont think we need man manipulating reproduction. You can believe what you want to believe. Its not me you will have to answer to.
You are right!
CAN ANYONE REALLY SAY IT IS RIGHT OR WRONG UNTIL THEY HAVE BEEN FACED WITH LOSING A CHILD. I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WOULD DO BUT AS A MOTHER I HAVE A PRETTY GOOD IDEA.
If a family wants another child after a child with a genetic disorder is born, Ok, but the question has to be asked: Is embryo selection ok? In my opinion, once an embryo has been formed it is a human being, developing into somebody with a special purpose and individuality. That relates also to people who are born with life-threatening genetic disorders, and embryos left at the mercy of the scientists and parents. I can totally sympthesize with parents with sick children, but what about the 4 or 5 embryos you are going to be destroying in the process?
How can you say that God controls procereation but has no hand in the development of technologies for contraception? Either He is omnipotent or He isn’t! How do you know that this isn’t a wonderful way for a higher power to allow us to have some say in when we have children, and for women, what happens to our bodies?
I do not believe that a collection of cells with no mental or physical feeling can be classed as a being.
I also know that I will want the best for my children, and that includes their health.
Read My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult, it’s an amazing story, inspiring and very relevant!
Quote: “…at one month, I will have no qualms aborting the foetus.”
It matters not whether the baby has received its eternal soul at the moment of conception or at any subsequent stage (in fact one of the visionaries at Medjugorje apparently received the answer from Our Lady that a child receives its eternal soul at four and a half months). The point is that the soul has no home to live in and abortion violates God’s will for the soul either way.
I think that designer babies are a bad idea
BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD…………………………….
so you get my point!!!!!
I get the point that you are mentally handicapped.