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Being in the field of biomedical research, ethical and unethical are the words I hear the most often. The ethics I am talking about are with respect to research of course – viz. plagiarism, authorship, the use of animal and human subjects, and the sorts. We recently had a class on the use of human subjects in biomedical research. This blog is on ethics related to the same.
Have you watched the movie/read the book “My Sister’s Keeper”? For those who have not…let me tell you the story on which this movie and book are based. This is a story of the Nash family which includes a mom, a dad and a sweet girl named Molly– like any other family you may say. But no; this girl was suffering from Fanconi’s anemia. This condition is characterized by short stature, skeletal anomalies, increased incidence of solid tumors and leukemias, bone marrow failure, and sensitivity to DNA damaging agents.
The treatment for Molly was a bone marrow replacement from a sibling. She was the only child of her parents. After hearing about the only treatment option, her parents thought of having more children. They decided not to waste time and create a savior sibling using PGD with HLA typing. (now what is that?? Well PGD stands for Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis and HLA stands for Human Leukocyte Antigen.) So well, technique allowed them to “select” a child which would be the donor for their daughter. Mother’s eggs and father’s sperms were collected and several zygotes were created and then using the procedures mentioned above they selected the one that was a perfect match for Molly. This was followed by in vitro fertilization and a perfect little boy, Adam, was born – or rather engineered. The doctors transplanted Adam’s cord blood (from the placenta that was collected after he was born) into Molly. And so brother saved sister and Molly was fine… getting better.
Both the children are doing good now. Well the real life story ended here…but..
Think about it…if Molly would have developed any other complications say for example liver failure/kidney failure etc; and needed a sibling as a donor…
Will her new brother serve as the body part farm again? Will the parents be willing to sacrifice him for her? I mean…true that they engineered Adam to serve the purpose of saving Molly…but after all he is their second child. Is it ethical to create so many embryos to select one from them…and that too for sacrifice? What will happen of the other embryos? Will they be used for the oh-so-hot stem cell research? Scientifically ethical I would say. But..isn’t the beautiful word called ‘reproduction’ being taken for granted? What will Adam think? “If Molly had not been sick, I would not be in this world… Am I just a spare part store for Molly?” Is Adam old enough to give consent to cut off his organs for Molly? Should the parents be emotionally attached to Adam or consider him as just a solution to saving Molly – their original, natural child?
Another case discussion revolved around little Sally who was suffering from something that made her nothing more than a vegetable. To make her life simpler, her parents and the doctors removed her uterus so that she would not menstruate and would be spared of the associated pain. They cut out her breast buds so she would not develop breasts! And all this so that she will not feel awkward in public! Is this ethical? I mean Sally was a girl…a woman after all… The pains associated with a woman make a woman a woman!
These and so many more cases stir me…
When you sacrifice hundreds of embryos to find the right one – aren’t you killing all the other “babies” who could have stepped in this mean mean world – to make it better probably?? This brings up a question – where does life begin? at conception? at implantation? at the first heart beat?? What is life? Is life what fate has in for you? Is it destiny? So, well, I think anything that exists has “life”…even without a beating heart. A chair has life…so I will not kick the chair. A football has life…but it was destined to be a ‘foot’ball and thus can be kicked. It is we humans who decide destiny/fate…right? Or is it divine?
Is it ok to let Sally live even though life for her had no meaning? Or is it ethical to try to make life easy for her by snatching away the woman from within her?? Is euthanasia (mercy killing) ethical?
Is the definition of ethical different from a scientist’s point of view? – from a philosophical point of view? – from a divine point of view?
