Where the road may lead

Editorial

Earlier this month, the Israeli press reported that pre-embryonic genetic diagnosis (PGD) had been used to enable an Israeli couple to conceive a baby who would be a perfectly matched donor for a brother in need of a bone marrow transplant. The four-year-old boy was suffering from a rare and usually fatal genetic disease, Fanconi's anemia. By replacing the boy's diseased bone marrow with healthy, matched stem cells from his baby sister's umbilical cord, Israeli doctors were able to grant the child a new lease on life.

In the case of the Israeli couple, doctors actually suggested that they have another child through in-vitro fertilization. The embryo was carefully selected as having the perfect match to allow the umbilical cord to be used as a bone marrow transplant for the first child. But should a couple bring a child into the world as a means of curing another?

Asa Kasher, a Tel-Aviv University philosophy professor and ethicist doesn't believe it's a problem.

"We tend to ignore the fact that the world has changed, and that a large percentage of people decide to have children for a variety of reasons. One can imagine an instance in which a marriage counsellor advises a couple to have a child. That child may help solve the parents' problems, but once he is born, who cares? He is a child like any other, and the reason for bringing him into the world doesn't matter."

Who is Kasher kidding? If a couple pins any hopes whatsoever of a solution to a problem, be it marriage- or health-related, on the birth of a child, they are setting themselves up for a huge disappointment if it doesn't work and that's bound to turn to resentment directed at the child. You'd have to be made of stone not to treat your child differently if the reason you brought them into the world is not realized. And what will that child think when he or she grows up to learn that the reason they exist is because there was a problem they were supposed to solve years earlier? If the relationship with the parents is excellent (really, how many are?), there may be no side effects. But if there is tension or dysfunctionality in the relationship between parent and child, that child is going to know and perhaps be haunted their entire life that they were not conceived purely out of love.

Certainly one would not deny a couple the chance to save a child, but parents making this type of decision must be aware of that they are opening a Pandora's Box of emotions that may be difficult to handle.

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