of savior siblings and designer babies

disclaimer: I am no expert as far as this topic is concerned but coming across this topic sure fired up my interest in what i am doing here in this fish bowl (aka, RA's room). i am beginning to revive the sense of being relevant again. (charing! hehe)

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here's an excerpt from one of the articles (Sheldon & Wilkinson, 2004) i am using for my report:

"Recent high profile cases in Australia, the UK, and the USA have brought to the public’s attention a new kind of embryo selection. By using HLA (human leucocyte antigen) typing, popularly known as ‘‘tissue typing’’, in conjunction with preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), doctors are now able to pick an embryo for implantation which, if all goes well, will become a ‘‘saviour sibling’’, a brother or sister capable of donating life-saving tissue to an existing child. In the UK, the most recent case to reach the courts and the newspapers
is that of the Hashmis. Their son, Zain, has b-thalassaemia, a blood disorder which could
be cured using tissue from the umbilical cord of a sibling, but only if the sibling is a tissue match.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority gave permission for the Hashmis to
select a saviour sibling for Zain. This decision was swiftly challenged in the courts, with the UK High Court finding that the selection of a saviour sibling was unlawful. In May 2003, the Court of Appeal overturned this decision, declaring that tissue typing can be authorised under current legislation."

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the issue is surrounded by controversies. in my own limited understanding, saviour siblings are babies which are successfully developed from an embryo that a doctor picks out from among several other embryos (meaning fertilized na), hoping that this saviour baby would be a perfect tissue match to his or her older brother or sister. their purpose for making sure that there would be a genetic match, is for the "saviour sibling" to save his ate or kuya from certain conditions, say bone marrow transplants, or in the case presented in the article, beta-thalassemia (a genetic blood disorder wherein the person has reduced hemoglobin levels in blood; hemoglobin is important in making sure, different parts of the body receives oxygen, kumbaga jeep sya at ikaw un oxygen, haha what a lame metaphor!).


for lay people like us, it would appear that the saviour baby is "manufactured" to benefit his or her older sibling, although the intention is to save a life, these babies could soon be nothing less of a mere commodity. furthermore, what some experts in embryology fear is the fact that it could be a dangerous first step towards allowing parents to choose other characteristics such as hair color, sex and eye color of their babies--or the rise of the so-called designer babies.


issues like these deserve a proper venue for discussion. it is not enough for ordinary people like us to hear about these stories and do nothing. we can always educate ourselves to understand these issues. sometimes, both knowing too much and knowing too little can be dangerous. those more knowledgeable could not blame those who have limited grasp of issues like these when we get caught up with fear of what we do not fully understand. we are all part of humanity and i guess it is only proper that we get involved in matters that concern our life. and we should always make an effort to stay informed before passing any judgment on certain matters. it may sound cool in the beginning, until we realize, what lines are we crossing?