Michelle and Jayson Whitaker have been married for a couple of years. Michelle is 33 years and Jayson is 35 years old. They always dreamed of having a happy family, in which they wanted to have only one son. After one year of their marriage, god blessed them with one, whom they name Charlie. Unfortunately, Charlie was diagnosed with a life threatening blood condition known as Diamond Blackfan Anaemia. The Whitakers thought that the only solution to cure their one beloved son was to have a sibling, a donor for Charlie. After the success of the Nash’s family, they were encouraged to screen embryos to give birth to a healthy child that would be a perfect cell match for Charlie, so they applied for the allowance to do that. At first, the HFEA refused their request as Charlie’s condition is not genetic and such a technique will not do that much of a help. But the Whitakers didn’t give up and went to the USA were the policies are not as strict. After some considerable stress, Jamie was born and was able to be a successful donor for Charlie by providing umbilical cord blood. …show more content…
2- Do you think that it is ethical for the parents to agree on donating tissues as cord blood? 3- If such a procedure required an invasive process that would harm the new child, what do you believe the right thing to
Chapters 23 and 24 detail how scientists collected DNA samples from the Lacks family in the 1970s. Why were the doctors interested in collecting samples from Deborah and Henrietta’s children? Did they follow an informed consent process – in other words – did Deborah and the family members understand why their genetic material was being collected and how it would be used?
In the article “Selecting the Perfect Baby: The Ethics of “Embryo Design,” is an article about a married couple, name Larry and June Shannon. They have a daughter, four years old, name Sally, who is diagnosed with Fanconi Anemia. Therefore, the Shannons are getting help from a research team, to find the perfect bone marrow transplant for Sally. The Shannon couple is also interested in having another child and they are aware of the risks and odds of success. However, a PGD process has to be performed and the couple must undergo an IVF procedure more than once, before the implantation is successful, to be able to produce a healthy full-term baby.
Explanation: This is because in this case the procedure would be attempting to save the baby from ever contracting cancer and though the procedure would likely to have its own fair share of uncertain consequences it would thus be worth trying to save the baby from cancer and enable them have a long healthy life not threatened by cancer.
“Skloot traces the changing ethics and law around tissue collections, and the inadvertently careless journalists and researchers who violated the family’s privacy by publishing everything from Henrietta’s medical records to the family’s genetic information.” (Margonelli). Skloot thoroughly explains how these laws effected the Lacks family and how their case led to medical ethics and law changes. The authors main purpose for including this was to share the Lacks’ story and their experience with immoral medical ethics. Another main point explained throughout the book is medical science. With the discovery of HeLa cells science began to have a rapid rate of new discoveries and cures to other diseases. “The reason Henrietta’s cells were so precious was because they allowed scientists to perform experiments that would have been impossible to perform with a living human. They cut HeLa cells apart and exposed them to endless toxins, radiation, and infection.” (Skloot 58). Skloot explains that without Henrietta’s cells science would not have evolved to what it has become
In the early 1970s, researchers called the Lacks family requesting blood samples from Henrietta’s family so as to determine which cells were HeLa cells as they had begun contaminating other cell cultures in labs. One has to wonder if the need to identify HeLa cells from other cells hadn’t arisen, than perhaps the Lacks family would have never been told of impact of their mother’s cells. As it is, the researchers who contacted the Lacks family didn’t make much effort to explain the situation to Day Lacks, Henrietta’s husband, or her children. Mr. Lacks had only a third grade education, so he didn’t know
The scientific community’s careless mistreatment of the Lacks family began with dehumanizing Henrietta’s cells in the very first lab. Generalizing people can especially be easy when one is working with their cells in a lab. The many scientists working on Henrietta’s cells must have found it easy to separate the cells from the person and reduce them to tools to aid them in the task at hand. This view may be harmless when it comes to the individual scientist, and the individual cell, but this view extended to the entire Lacks family and caused them much harm. “Meanwhile, Victor McKusick and Susan Hsu had just published the results of their research in
He proposed they contact the Lacks children to request samples from them so they could compare their DNA to the HeLa cells. When asked if informed consent had been given, McKusick replied, “I suspect there was no effort to explain anything in great detail. But I don’t believe anyone would have told them we were testing for cancer because that wasn’t the case” (183). Nevertheless, this is what the Lacks believed for years, causing Deborah to panic as she had long feared developing the same cancer that had killed her
Around the same time to the Hashmis another family, the Whitakers also requested approval from the HFEA for the use of PGD with HLA tissue typing to create an embryo that,when born, would be a compatible bone marrow donor for their three-year-old son. Their son was suffering from the rare disorder of Diamond-Blackfan anaemia which, should he not receive a bone marrow transplant, gave him a life expectancy of approximately 30 years.
The novel “My Sister’s Keeper” by Jodi Picoult explores the medical, legal, ethical and moral issues related to long term illness and discusses some of the bioethical issues around the experimental technique known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. The author presents many ethical dilemmas when a couple chooses to genetically engineer a baby to create a bone marrow match for their terminally ill daughter. That creation is Anna Fitzgerald, who is beginning to wonder about her place in the world and questions her on going donations in order to save her sister’s, Kate’s life. Anna feels that her existence is defined by her ability to save her sister. That type of
The principle of nonmaleficence, to do no harm, in reproductive technology can be applied to the prospective parents and the prospective child-the embryo. The procedures involved in attempting to impregnate a woman can be physically and emotionally damaging, but rewarding if done successfully. But the parties must first determine to what extent and at what cost will they risk to achieve their ultimate goal. It would cause great harm physically to the embryos if there were multiple unsuccessful attempts, but many would argue that the end outweighs the means, that it is worth it if the result was a viable pregnancy and healthy child.
A terrible accident in 1999 left them without their youngest child three year old Nicole. With their four sons they desperately wanted another little girl. Although they say that they were not wanting to replace the daughter they had lost. They had been trying for 15 years to conceive
of rape or incest may not want to have the baby, as it would remind
In the novel "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult, a child is genetically engineered and received to become a donor for another child's benefit. This novel covered the story of the genetically engineered child trying to fight for the right of her own body over her parents. This novel questioned human ethics and morals of human and the extent of medical technologies. At the end of the novel, it states that there is no correct answer in this situation and I know it was a hard decision to make among the two, but I viewed it was unethical in Fitzgerald’s case.
| In this option Michelle’s parents are not presented with a lot of options. There would be a lot of stress involved with not being able to donate and trying to find a donor for Michelle. If she dies they are basically left with nothing but grief and a hefty hospital bill.
In late 2011 Kelley was 30 she wanted to help a couple conceive and she could use the surrogate fee- often upwards of 20,000—to supplement her income as she raised her girls. In October 2011 the embryos were transferred to Kelley. She said she received not only the financial support that she had expected from the intended parents. But everything changed with her surrogacy on the day of her 21-week anatomy scan she saw flickers of concern come across the teach-in’s face during the scan. Then she started getting alarming message from the intended mother telling her to abort the baby because she’s not going to have an imperfect baby with a cleft palette.