The Story of My Sister's Keeper
My sister’s keeper is a story about Anna who was a designer baby conceived to be a donor for her sister, Kate. Anna was eleven years old. Kate was three years older and was suffering from leukaemia. Anna had to donate body tissues to Kate for her survival and in the course of time Kate had gone into Kidney failure. Anna’s parents turned towards Anna for kidney donation. She filed a case of medical emancipation against her parents so that she could be the owner of her own body.
Jessie was the older brother of Anna and Kate. Brian and Sara are their parents. Sara was working as a lawyer earlier and she gave up her job to take care of Kate. Brian worked at a local firehouse. Sara tried to convince Anna to withdraw the case. Sara wanted Anna to donate a kidney to Kate and help her. Brian didn’t support anybody and was depressed. Anna after moving out of the house stayed in the firehouse.
Jessie was upset with Kate’s illness. Jessie started drinking, stealing, using drugs and getting into arson. He had been setting fires around town that Brian and the other firefighters had to put out. When Brian found out that his son was behind the fires, he confronted him. Brian learnt that Jesse was deeply affected by Kate’s illness, and so he decided to keep it to himself .
When hearing for Anna began, Judge Joan would have just returned from the grief of her child’s death after 6 month vacation . Her child died in a car accident caused by drunk driving. Joan assigned Anna to stay with a guardian Julia Romano, who also knew Anna’ lawyer, Campbell. They attended the same school and dated until Campbell called off their relationship. When Anna’s case brought them together again, their attraction became obvious despite their intention to remain professional throughout the lawsuit.
Kate conveyed to her mother why she wanted to die. The same night Kate expired. The family’s life started to normalize and Sara started to work as a lawyer, Brian started training youth who were dropouts from college. Eventually, Jesse stopped stealing, starting fires, using drugs, and drinking alcohol. He started attending school and ended up becoming a police officer. Anna always felt she had the most wonderful sister ever and their relationship continued.
Conclusion:
Sara and Brain forced her to donate granulocytes, lymphocytes, platelets to Kate. Can Sara and Brian utilise Anna to donate living tissue for Kate?Kate and Anna have compromised autonomy and their parents being surrogate decision makers and Anna being a saviour baby for Kate, Anna’s parents only thought of beneficence and they had no intention to cause maleficence to Anna.
Donation of body tissue should be altruistic and voluntary. It is highly unethical to force a living person to donate organs as it disrespects the dignity of the human body.
Kate had leukaemia. She needed a saviour sibling to prolong her life. So her parents went ahead for preimplantation genetic diagnosis and Anna was born who was a savior sibling for Kate. In this case scenario, preimplantation genetic diagnosis was used ethically.
Both Sara and Anna are virtuous enough to help Kate. Sarah should not have been allowed to advocate for Anna's involvement in the transplants because of her biased thought process. Anna being a saviour baby is vulnerable with compromised autonomy. Kate was stigmatized because of her appearance and she couldn’t socialize with other people. Sara showed deontology and had decided that it was okay if Anna was asked to donate living tissue for Kate right from Anna’s birth.
The utilitarian approach is emphasizing that the good outweighs the harm. I think that Sara took this approach to decide to have another child to save the life of Kate.
