h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Have a look at this case, I was wondernig wwhat you thought of it,

By the way the child concerned isn't dying but he does have to go undergo very painful treatments, and there is no guarentee that the bone marrow transplant would work..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2906179.stm

I must admit I'm really in two minds about this...

I think the best people to sort this one out would be a battery of psychologists working on the parents...

Unless the psychologists can agree that the parents actually want a second child anyway and are not just having that child to save the first one then I'd say definitely not...

yes I read that he was the third child, and that the eldest two were in their late teens... so that seems unlikely.

I wonder how the unborn baby would cope if the bone marrow transplant didn't work...

They have, I think, five children, so are well aware of what increasing the family is like. I don't think you can say that because someone already has two or three or six children, then their motives for having another are questionable. You really have to love children - or be very very foolish if you don't - to have five children and to consider a sixth. Would you love thta sixth child less, because they were able to save the life of your son, or would you - if anything - love them more?

All the existing siblings, inbcluding the younger, cannot provide a match. It is now quite common to use bone marrow from an extant sibling - it doesn't even make the news nowadays - are any more rights being violated in one case or another?

I if it were my child, I'd be fighting for a saviour sibling.

I don't see a reason why not, as long as kiddy wink was loved as much as the rest, and didn't grow up feeling it was called into existence purely to save big brother/sister. After all, a 'natural' sibling would stand a fair chance of being a match- all you're doing is loading the dice.

All the things I've read about this family suggest that the couple are only interested in having another child in order to provide a cure for their son, typical quote from the mother: "We would like you to please consider our son who will die a terrible death if we are not granted permission to try and save him."

I haven't seen them once say that they want another child and simply wish to load the dice. Horribly tricky, but my feeling is that we shouldn't have kids simply for spare parts

Makes me very uncomfortable this case - I don't like to think of myself as agreeing with anything a pro-life group has to say.

If you could have a baby that could save the life of your seriously ill child, you would value the new baby all the more surely? It's not as if we are talking about breeding spare parts here with the donor abandoned at the end of the excercise. If the child was conceived by "natural means" and was a perfect match, no-one would turn a hair if its bone marrow were used to treat a sibling, surely this is just giving nature a little help.

If (god forbid) I was in that position and it were possible for me to do this, I would not hesitate in having another child to save my daughter, but I wonder if there is a difference in attitude between parents and non-parents on this issue?

I haven't followed this case in particular... I will go away and read up on it. If that's their only concern, then I personally don't approve, but who am I to judge

Hi Kelly, haven't seen you around for a while, have you been off enjoying real life for a while.

This makes me uncomfortable, for a strange reason that Ican't quiet understand..and I'm pro choice on abortion, though I don feel uncomfortable when people abort babies that aren't terribily disabled, eg with cleft palate, in there case Thassamaemia, it's not a nice disease but it doesn't make you less of a person.

Still I guess that descion is there's and who am I to tell them that it was the wrong one..

Hi Z - I've got a new job so can only pay flying visits these days

I should really consult my moral compass on this one - anyone know what Ann Widdecombe thinks about this? Put me down for the opposite

OOoh I don't know, Help I'm argreeing with Ann Widicome... away fast...

Hope the new jobs going okay...

If any one else can have achild for vanity, for the chance to jump the housing list or to please their parents then why cant this couple have a child to save the health and life of a child loved by the parents and siblings. Dont forget the two younger sons will be without their big brother. Infact people wlready have children to provide "spare parts" but the government in this country will not allow the screening that will ensure a match. Yet it funds other medical forms of family engineering.

If it was my first child then I might be more inclined to try for a younger sibling (or two) who might have the requirement naturally, but as this child is already towards the end of a string of siblings, I can see more sense in trying to Get It Right First Time, which is how I read the mother's comments (could be wrong) after all, the longer it's left and/or the older she is when she gives birth to the 'right' child, the more chance that the baby has another conditions - the rates for Downs' rocket when you pass 40. Not - may I stress - that I have an issue with Downs' babies, but I can see the sense in finding a solution sooner rather than later.

Yes I can see the arguement, and I suppose it's better to be alive with a few psychological problems, than not be alive at all..

KerrAvon said: "a 'natural' sibling would stand a fair chance of being a match- "

Actually in this case it wouldn't, which is why the controversy - apparently a naturally conceived sibling would have only a one in sixteen chance (if I heard correctly) of being a match.

My own opinion (irrelevant, I think, because I don't and won't have kids), is that it should be permitted, and that one way or another, somewhere, sooner or later it WILL be permitted - so why not now?

H.

Ahh, I see. As I said earlier, I really haven't been following this one . I still don't see a problem- as someone said earlier, people have children for mcuh worse reasons than this, or indeed no reason at all.

Exactly. And the family are clearly equipped to raise the child, financially as well as emotionally.

The fact that I personally consider the mother to come across as pushy, arrogant (says ME! ) and unpleasant doesn't change the fact that I think she should actually be granted permission to do what she wants in this case.

H.

indeed

I doubt that seeing your child go through painful treatment every week brings out the best in anyone. Society (by which I don't necessarily mean YOU, Hoo ) still has a nasty habit of wanting mothers to do the tender gentle BVM thing straight out of the Christmas carols. Boo to that!

OOokay, imagine putting yourself in the position on the child, if you were ill would you want another sibling to be created so that you could possibly get better..

Do you mean: ask a four year old "Would you like a baby brother or sister, who, in your simplistic, possibly Freudian view of the world, may supplant you in our affections, or would you like to be subjected to this pain for the rest of your life, which will last no longer - according to current predictions - than late middle age?" or do you mean imagine asking the same child, when adult, if he was happy with the decision taken on his behalf?