Savior Siblings: Our Concluding Thoughts

Judy

Let’s take a little gander at all the amazing topics we discussed on this 6 week journey: the Katie Trebing story, savior siblings, difference in perception of embryos, 411 on IVF/PGD/bone marrow transplantation, PGD regulatory practices or lack there of in the US and internationally, testing your flag skills, and lastly, slippery slope of PGD-->Designer babies?!? Wow, we have definitely covered a lot of ground in such a short period time. Hopefully, y’all thought it was informative, interesting, thought-provoking, and just a smidge of fun :-) I just wanted to thank you all for following our weekly posts and a double thank you to everyone who left awesome comments on the site! This was a topic that we both new very little about prior to this blog but were extremely intrigued in the emotional, moral, and ethical issues that encompassed it. It definitely won’t the last you’ll hear about these topics. So here’s to the future of savior siblings/PGD/designer babies and the anticipation of what’s to come!

My conclusive thoughts on the topics at hand (this is for those that are too lazy to scroll through the previous posts):

The book, My Sister’s Keeper = two-thumbs up, highly recommended read (grab a box of Kleenex though).
Savior siblings = Personally, if utilizing IVF/PGD for the creation of a savior sibling is an option for my family in the future, I would seriously consider it. I would like to think that I would only consider blood and bone marrow transfusions. I'm not at 100% peace with this thought but this is where I stand at this point.
The perception of an embryo = tough one, see above comment in regards to the 100% peace…I struggle with the thought of discarding so many viable embryos in the process of IVF and PGD solely for the creation for the ‘perfect match.’ However, definitely don’t think banning of these techniques are the answer.
PGD regulation = need some form of regulation here in the US!!!
Slippery slope of PGD/‘Designer babies’= regulation of PGD, where PGD is utilized to serve the purpose of medicine: to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases.