Yesterday, parents in Great Britain were given the right to use IVF to select a designer embryo as a ’spare parts’ baby under new laws that were published yesterday. Eventually, the laws will relax current laws on IVF clinics so that they can create ’designer’ savior siblings for the purpose of curing an older sibling. They hope that they could create a savior sibling with a perfectly matched kidney to help an older sibling with renal failure. . .for example. More immediately however, the savior siblings’ cord blood could be used to help an older sick sibling. Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill will be debated in British Parliament and is expected to become law in 2009.
I will readily admit that I don’t have any chronically ill children. Thus far, I’ve not had to endure countless hours of chemo or watch one of my children die. I cannot fathom such an experience and my heart truly goes out to all those who have to suffer in this way.
However, as the mother of five children, I cannot imagine purposefully creating a designer baby expressly for saving another sibling. I realize that a whole designer baby with perfectly matching organs is at least a few years away, however, I find the practice abhorrent.
Aside from the obvious dilemma (at least for me) of wasted embryos, I cannot fathom how a parent could inflict pain on their children intentionally–which is exactly what a designer baby would be designed to do. While cord blood would not pose risk or pain to the savior sibling, taking its spare kidney certainly would.
What I truly have to wonder is how would that savior sibling feel? Each of my children knows that they’re loved and are a valuable part of our family. But how would a savior child feel to know that they were created specifically to endure a painful surgery to save the older sibling? To have your value as a family member attached to your ability to cultivate cells, or organs, to me seems like it would be diminishing to one’s self esteem. I’m sure parents of chronically sick children feel that they’ve won a victory with these new laws but I have to wonder at what expense?