Consider the case of Zain Hashmi - he needs a baby brother or sister to save his life. In creating this new child many embryos will be destroyed. The new child may feel like it was created for 'spare parts'
1) what ethical issues do you see arising from this situation?
2) What do you think - should the Hashmi's have been allowed to create this new life using genetic screening?
Start and continue a debate!!
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6 comments:
When parents choose one embryo over others, do their actons degrade human value?
Is it ethical to create a human being for the sole purpose of harvesting his body parts?
is it ethical to not prevent someone from dying? Does a mother have any moral obligations to save her son?
How ethical is it for humans to design embryos? (by 'design', i mean 'change the DNA of')
1) what ethical issues do you see arising from this situation?
-quality of life (is the child going to be loved because they had it or because it has saved the other son...issues when the child understands could effect its quality of life)
-Embryo/child rights: they dont have a say in the matter, can someone make that decision?
2) What do you think - should the Hashmi's have been allowed to create this new life using genetic screening?
In my opinion humans have evolved to be what we are today through death and survival. There is obvious situations that call for natural selection. However I do think that if something is wrong with someone it is also in human nature to do whatever it takes to help. In the case of Zain I say that it is fine only if it was the complete last resort. If there was no human being already living who could be a doner for Zains life then yes I say help however possible. I also think that there has to be limitations to the genetic screening because it can get out of hand and people will be as said in class using it to get specific hair or eye colour, certain sex etc. Basically on the whole issue of genetic screening I believe that in some cases it is acceptable and those cases usually have to do with saving a life. Other cases seem pointless.
As human being i suppose we should have complete control and rights over our own body cells. There should be no strict boundaries on how we use our own body parts.
However, talking about ethics, I believe we are all selfish, and being selfish should not be ethical. From becoming pregnant, giving birth to the baby, researching on solutions to save the babies, are all signs of ego. Would there ever be an ethical decision?
Personally i would want to consider whether the first child Hashmi was an intentional pregnancy? If Hashmi do not want to see her first son suffering from any health problems, why would she want to reproduce another child and take body parts from he/she as this would affect the second child's health as well. How can we compare values of these 2 "babies lives" based on their body condition? If a mother would create a life to save another, this simply shows her hypocrisy towards her desire to control lives. Later on, when the second child is created, she might as well ask the government for the right to kill or abandon her previous ill child.
If the first child would come out ill, this means there is at least a 50% chance for the other to be as well. Hashmi would not be an ethical mother if she chooses her babies based on body condition. Human lives, we can not choose a family member based on a SIM game. This might be a matter of the medias influence.
issues that i see arising from this situation are to do with the child s quality of life. Since the sole purpose of life for this child is to keep Hashmi alive then he would feel neglected and unloved as his existence would only be the result of his brothers illness.
this also raises the question if the parents have to right to create a child for the sole purpose of using him to keep their other child alive.
This is an ethical gray area. It seems to be the lesser of two evils - either make a new life to help an existing one or lose a life.
In situations like these, one must decide between evolution and prevention of this natural process. With the development of medical science, humans have been doing this for years. However, is this the right thing to do?
From AKi
Zain's life situation gives rise to an important ethical concept which is where does one draw the line to compare Zain's quality of life with the collective potential quality of all the apparent 'superhuman' embryo's that the Hashmi's are happily utilising for their own alive son's benefit and purpose.
Personally, I do not believe that Zain's life can equate to the collective quality of the embryo's as it seems as though they are just sacrificing these embryo's as waste if they serve no purpose to Zain. But Zain's is also a human isn't he? So how do the parents have the control and authority to decide whether they should initiate and then terminate life freely just because it does not serve Zain's purpose? I believe it is utterly naive and comical to think that this is acceptable after all, with humans ultimately being emotivists, if one showed the Hashmi's the human-shaped figures of all the embryo's, then this would not occur.
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