Ethics Of Saviour Siblings

A saviour sibling is a child who is conceived through the use of IVF and born in order to treat an older brother or sister who has a fatal disease; the child’s genes, which are a genetic match, are selected to ensure the developed foetus will be free from the original disease and able to treat the existing child (Cambridge Dictionaries, 2016).

This report will outline the ethics of conceiving a child for the purpose of using cells, tissues or even organs to treat an existing child with a fatal disease. In outlining the ethics of saviour siblings, the question of whether it is ethical to conceive a child for the purpose of becoming a saviour will be explored.

Saviour Siblings are children who are conceived using In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF),

The saviour child will also be free from the disease the existing child is suffering from; this can mean that the saviour child may have a better quality of life than they would have if suffering from the disease.

With the positives, come the negatives, some may consider “saviour siblings” as being a cruel process for the saviour child. The child may grow up feeling like they weren’t born for themselves, that they were unwanted or that they were only born for “spare parts” for their sibling.

Another ethical debate could be the ability to give informed consent. It can be argued that a child cannot fully be aware of what is happening until they reach a certain age (in South Australia, the age of medical consent is 16 years old) and therefore they cannot express their full informed consent for medical procedures until the age of 16 (MIGA, 2011). In any medical procedure, the patient must be informed about any risks and possible complications that may arise during the procedure and must be able to understand these risks and possible