Saviour Siblings: Creating A Second Child To Save Your First
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- Опубліковано 11 вер 2024
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Most parents would say they would do anything to help save their child. But is there a limit? Some parents are willing to create a second child in order to use them as "spare parts" for the sick first child. This second child is referred to as a saviour sibling. But what are the ethics behind this? What is the outcome for the saviour sibling? And can parents go too far in the quest to save their child's life?
#siblings #parents #medical #savioursibling #ethics #medicalethics #children #illness #deathpositivity #deatheducation #TabooEducation #death #didyouknow #funfacts
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Making and destroying one life to save another is disturbing, I question the ethics of the doctors creating these 'saviour' siblings along with the parents. Surely this shouldn't be legal.
I think a more accurate term would be to call them "sacrificial siblings"
THIS!! I've said this before. And yet the same people who praise this practice, are horrified at animal sacrifices. Go figure.
I would call this like it is: It's medical cannibalizing, and I use the term the way car restoration enthusiasts use the term "cannibalizing", in reference to taking parts out of a perfectly good, fully functioning vehicle to repair another vehicle.
How could anyone find essentially sacrificing a child for any reason ethical. The first story broke me.
I couldn't imagine doing this to myself or my children. I love my children, I would do anything for them. Including letting them die with peace and dignity. I couldn't imagine birthing an entire baby just to use it for spare parts for another child.
Thank you for exploring this controversial but important topic 🩵
Id do it in a heartbeat for the cord cells. Beyond that, I not sure. Maybe bone marrow transplant. But that is a question that we need to really think about. At the same time, I wanted more children anyhow.
This reminds me of the movie “My Sister’s Keeper”. In case anyone in the comments hasn’t watched the movie yet, it’s about a younger sister who fights her family through the US court system for a right to her own body as her older sister has cancer. Her family was using the younger sister to keep her older sister’s illness at bay through a kidney transplant or something like that as her cancer had spread to her kidneys. It’s been forever since I’ve seen the movie so I can’t remember all the details.
yeh she was birthed to provide blood and bone marrow to her sister and at the beginning of the movie she starts a court case because her mother wants her to give her sister a kidney, in the ned it turns out her sister with cancer asked her to start the court case because she was done with treatments
@@piarateking8094 Thank you for clarifying
I remember this and in the movie it was the mom who was desperate to save her order daughter and isn't listening to anyone. The older sister who has been sick most of her life and was done and asked her younger sister to go to court.
The book is also excellent and delves deeper into the topic of "saviour siblings", highly recommend!
@@theatrelover9920Thanks for that, I've seen the movie several tines but didn't know it originated from a book. Will keep a look out.💖
Life at any cost, comes to mind with this
being made aware of this concept as an actual occurrence has left me in a state of ethical crisis I didn't know was even possible. Thank you.
Where is the medical establishment that they do not prevent medical procedures on a child that is of no benefit to them. Do no harm. Deeply troubling subject but thanks for bringing attention to it.
this makes me so sad for those kids. I used to know a woman who was adopted to be a playmate for her older brother - she had a lot of problems.
Unless playmate is a euphemism for something really dark that isn't the same thing at all and is in fact a really insensitive comparison
@@Fishtacofriday No, not a euphamism. However, their entire childhood was about serving the older brother and his whims and desires while she was told hers did not matter. They were told, explicitly, that they were there as a companion for him. It shattered her sense of self worth and ability to accept love. Not EXACTLY the same, true, but I would argue the overall pathology is similar and the outcomes, while not identicle, deserve to be deplored just the same.
This is very similar to another phenomenon that's recently become an interesting talking piece, which is 'glass child' syndrome, in which a child has at least one sibling with special needs and is overshadowed by their sibling, overlooked by their parents and everyone around them. Just like with savior siblings, I've heard of stories where children have been born just so that they can take care of their disabled sibling once the parents die or can't anymore. It's messed up, disgusting, and probably one of, if not the most selfish reason to bring a child into this world. This section of medical ethics is so deeply layered and fascinating; I could discuss it for hours on end
Yep I've heard a lot about that as well. There is a lot I would like to say about it but can't for multiple reasons...
I am a school bus driver and for five years I took special needs children to school. Many of those children were so severely disabled that they did take nearly all of the time and attention that the parents had at the detriment of the other child/ren in the family. It was heartbreaking to see. So much effort was put into keeping those children alive from birth onwards and the sheer amount of resources required to keep them alive and cared for during the rest of their lives and I'm still very, very conflicted on the ethics of such efforts for such disabled children - it falls into the "just because we can doesn't mean we should" category for me. I was potentially faced with birthing a child that might need extensive care as he threatened to be born at 23 weeks. My thought at the time (and now) is that if he would've been severely disabled then let him die. A horrible decision that I was fortunate not to have to make (he ended up being 10 days overdue).
I agree with the comments questioning the ethics of the medical professionals allowing these "saviour" children. It seems to break the do no harm, and it'd raise a lot of red flags to me if that was suggested to me as a solution. I'm no medical professional but I'd want to interview the parents and the donor and recipient children in question all separate to try my best to get a VERY clear picture of things before signing off on such a thing. Having children involved really changes the lines of OK and not ok, especially when they're younger
Man. This concept just sounds like a distopian story problem but obviously it is unfortunately very real. Mary's story was heartbreaking. Brad's, in my opinion while also quite heartbreaking' sounds like if I were to survey savior children, many would say similarly to his. Genuinely it makes me want to say this shouldn't be legal but I can also understand there's probably no way to enforce that. Devastating.
I'm not a parent yet, admittedly a part of me wants to sympathize with the parents for a hardship I can only pray I never have to suffer. But also of course this isn't right. If it were me, I would be willing to give up myself. But I couldn't ask that of others. It reminds me a lot of the "third parent, the eldest daughter" problem that is so common, often so traumatizing, and is so unfortunate.
Come to think of it, there's a 1970s sci-fi B-movie "Parts: The Clonus Horror" that was remade in the 2000s as "The Island", where young adults are raised as spare parts for the elite. Also, Neal Shusterman's "Unwound" series of young adult novels where teenagers are routinely harvested for their organs, and that includes most any part of their bodies (brains included; there's a whole sub-plot involving people getting flashes of the memories/personalities breaking through to consciousness).
I have always wondered how I'd go if one of my daughters became ill. Good video and a lot to ponder . Even without "needing" a spare parts child it's also a good prompt as a parent to look at my relationships. Feel so much heartache for those kids x
The way I see it, you should have a child only if you *want* to and are *able* to raise *another human being* ; there is the issue of less-fortunate parents wanting that opportunity but struggling to get needed resources/services, but beyond that?
PLEASE don't have any children if you're not up to the *massive* commitment.
(If anyone has any additional points, bring it up in the replies)
Heartbreaking
This subject was used by Jodi Picoult in her Novel "MY SISTERS KEEPER". The older sister did manage to get what she needed from her younger sister. What wasn't counted on was that the younger sister would one day refuse to donate to her old sister anymore (she ran and found legal help in fighting for her rights). It is a very upsetting novel (which left me wondering if this was already happening). From your video, I just learned that the novel was based on truth. By the way, the two sisters in the novel are named Kay and Anna (my name is Kay and my younger sister is Anna, and we live in two different states in the U.S.A.).
I wonder if that book, and the later movie was based on a real life woman named Anissa, who went through this when she was a kid in the early 90's. I can't remember if Anissa was the one who gave the bone marrow transplant to save her sister, or the one who received it. I think they were from Hawaii. They were the first or one of the first families in the U.S to do something like this. But as far as I heard, the sisters were happy and had a good relationship.
The true story is very different than the book and movie. The family that it was based on only used cord blood, so it didn’t harm her. They also went on to have another child, bc they wanted more kids anyway. Also in the movie, the kids names were Kate and Anna, not Kay. In real life those weren’t the names, the second child the used the cord blood from was actually a boy.
@@amysilverstone3998 Yeah, I know the story you're talking about. One of the girls was named Anissa. I actually wasn't sure if My sister's keeper was based on her story or not. I'm not sure if they just used cord blood, or if they actually had her do a bone marrow donation at the age of one, or something. But when My sister's Keeper came out, I never would've thought that it would even be legal for a family to keep making a kid donate things to their other kid for years, well after the point where the kid is old enough to talk and remember it, and certainly not organs.
O my……I think this is one of the most thought provoking videos I have seen for some time!
I don’t like this, I don’t think it should allowed. I’m sorry, many may or may not agree, but I feel it is somewhat ethically and morally wrong.
I really feel for those poor little human beings.
Just as an afterthought-could these children (as adults) consider legal compensation of sorts, considering what was done to them as children?!? 🤔
The children still have rights as children. As stated in the video, the can become Medically Emancipated from the parents and cannot be used anymore. If you haven't seen the movie My Sister's Keeper, it will show you the rights of all involved and how quickly it breaks a family apart. I'm not sure if an adult can be compensated from past harm, as there may be a Statute of Limitations in your jurisdiction. Something you'll have to look up yourself. The above movie was set in the US and would encompass their laws. In my opinion, whether a child or adult, they deserve compensation for the choices they were never given. What a topic to be hit with first thing on a Saturday morning! Especially when rather sick myself. A brilliant video.🇦🇺💖
@@krisushi1 yes, emancipation was stated in the video, but I was interested in the legalities (compensation, etc etc).
I have not seen that movie, as I’m not one to watch movies, but thank you for the info, it may be something of interest to me
@@niknax5159 I intend to look this up myself, as you brought up a very good point as to whether and adult can be compensated for the harm inflicted as a child by the parents. I hadn't really thought of that and will definately look into it. Thank you.💖
@@krisushi1 let me know how you go with it
@@niknax5159 Will do. It may take sometime as I'm quite ill at present, but this topic does interest me, as does law.💖
Wow. I feel this is the most messed up thing you have covered.
I mean thank you for covering this. But ahhh, wow.
I have to wonder about the ethical implications of creating an IVF baby SPECIFICALLY as a Savior Sibling. Would the IVF technician be well within their rights to say "no, I will not help you create a child for the sole purpose of spare parts"? Or can they be brought to some sort of meeting and have their license reviewed for making Savior Siblings?
You'd think the whole "harm no one" thing would be brought up in this instance. And you'd think their personal ethics would kick in: "have fun reproducing and hoping the genetic gods smile upon you before the eighth child!"
This almost makes me think we should go back to the days when becoming a parent was contingent upon finding a partner whom was willing and able to reproduce with you
what if the new child has the same disease? Will they just keep making babies until the get the right combo?
They test the embryos and only select those without the disease
I have found this disgusting since the first time I heard of it which was decades ago.
The parents who do this are narcissists.
What a topic. Thx for addressing this.
I gave birth at 20 weeks to my anencephaly baby because I didn't want to go through an entire pregnancy thinking how much pain he would be in at full term if he was born alive. I have always given my kids full autonomy over their bodies from pierced ears to how they want their hair. Children are their own person
So my mom has a free novel reading habit, & one of the leads was a child raised in the rare "not as toxic as it coulda been" version of this dynamic. There was also a scene where the best man got bitten by the maid of honor whose a bear, if any of that clocks.
What you said at the end is pretty much where I land. Nobody should be made to feel like that, the least a parent can do is understand what this kinda thing will do to a child.
Besides the parents the medical professionals involved are at fault here as well. The people at the IVF clinic know what they are doing and prior to agreeing to this they should require a psychiatric evaluation of the parents and if the child is old enough someone should talk to them about their rights. Also the doctors doing these procedures should have the donor child evaluated and make sure these children have an advocate as once a doctor starts doing procedures on the second child then that child becomes their responsibility too.
There should also be a requirement that before each procedure is preformed using the second child that both parents are cleared by a psychiatrist and that the second child has given an enthusiastic yes. If the either parent is shown to have mental illness that would effect their judgment then they loose their right to make medical decisions for their child and the medical teams involved are put on alert to watch out for the children.
Also I hope the 17 year old left at 18 and never looked back because f his mom, she can donate part of liver to her daughter.
I have four kids. I’d do anything for them - but this. What the actual fuck.
Thanks for doing this video, it's a very hard topic to cover and watch.
Hate to break it to the kid who said he wasn't abused, but, he was abused. It sounds like he was emotionally abused on some level. Just because your parents aren't throwing you into walls or flogging you or SA'ing you, doesn't make it Not Abuse. Emotional abuse might be the subtlest tool in the abuse kit, but it can still cut deep, it's just harder to prove the damage in a court of law.
And to any people who might be reading this comment section who might be Medically Cannibalizing (which is what it is, technically) their kid? You are monsters. You make Dracula look like Dorothy Day by comparison.
English is not my first language, so I'm not sure if I can express my thoughts coherently enough. I think those parents can't develop attachment to the savior sibling, while they love the older, sick child, the same way a farmer can love his dog dearly but doesn't develop a particular attachment to their pigs or chicken, even if he cares for them in a material way (food, shelter, protection). I think it's a defense mechanism - they know why the sibling exists, they cannot risk hesitation when it's time to 'use' them - mixed with a certain amount of shame. If you never see the savior sibling as your child, you can't feel guilty when you inevitably have to mutilate them for body parts. You can't afford to love them the same way.
What in the what?!? The title alone is like a damn jumpscare what?!! People actually do this??
That’s so sad. I think it’s fine if you end up using the stem cells you banked from one child to help the other if they just happen to be a match, but not if it’s planned like that and they didn’t already want another child.
I thought this was only in horror movies! My god, this is fucked up and I don’t even particularly like kids.
If I found out right now that I had been born to save my older sister, I would be absolutely fine with that. I adored her. I was actually a good match for one of my cousins, and donated bone marrow for her and had no problem with it, so if it had been for my sister that wouldn't make a difference. I've also had a liver transplant and have poor kidney and liver function.
I also already was neglected, abused and controlled in my childhood. If it had been for my sister, it would have been for a reason instead of just because I wasn't good enough.
I'm just afraid it would have made me bitter towards my sister, and we wouldn't have had the same relationship.
But that's me, and I'm already a psychological mess. In general, that's cruel. I wouldn't wish my issues on anyone.
Are people seriously doing this for organ transplants? I didn't think that was allowed. I thought you were only allowed to do this for cord blood or a one time bone marrow transplant. What the hell kind of nutcase would purposely give birth to a baby for the purpose of making them donate an organ when they get older? You can't force anyone else to donate an organ. How the hell could it be legal to make a kid do it? Or even if it isn't legal to force a kid under 18 do it, to raise them with the expectation that they're supposed to make the decision to do it when they get old enough - That's abuse. Sure, you could raise the kid their whole life without ever discussing the issue or even telling them that you purposely conceived them for this reason. And just wait and secretly hope on baited breath, that when the time comes for sibling #1 to need the transplant, that their relationship with sibling #2 has naturally panned out the way you hoped it would (that they love each other and decided on their own to do it.) But what if that doesn't happen?
The question I'm wondering about is: If the answer to your last question is that the parents accept the child's choice and still love the child who decided against saving their sibling the same way that any parent who loses one of their two kids would, then could the parents' decision of making a savior child be justifiable?
Suppose perhaps that the parents always wanted another child and the idea of that child being a potential organ donor was just added to their original hopes.
I realise this isn't realistic or anything, I was just wondering on a more philosophical level if we could come up with a however specific or unlikely scenario where a savior sibling would not be unethical. I'd love to read someone's thoughts on this.
@@iliasodyssee9626 The first famous case of this happening was when a woman named Marissa Ayala was conceived to save her sister Anissa, who had leukemia in the early 90's. They didn't even use IVF to have her, so they didn't even know if it was going to work. Her dad had to reverse his vasectomy in order to have her. I first read about it in Reader's Digest magazine when I was a kid, in the late 90's. I didn't think it was that big of a deal because they were willing to have a second baby and they were going to love her no matter what. And they only ever intended for her to do a one time bone marrow donation. They weren't going to keep making her go through repeated donations throughout her whole childhood, or pressure her into a kidney or liver donation, when she got older, or anything. When I found out there have been people who have actually done that sort of thing, I was shocked. Everything turned out good for the Ayalas. Here's an article about them from 2013. www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/woman-conceived-in-1988-to-save-sisters-life-graduates-college/
This must be illegal
As a parent of child that had a liver transplant and could possibly need another or a kidney in the future, no way!! I love my baby but never ever would create another child for parts, that’s sick. It should be illegal. There’s a lot of hoops for living donors to keep it ethical, I am surprised that organ donation from a child, adult or otherwise that was created for that purpose would be approved.
Is there a link to the journal you mentioned?
Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro
How do saviour siblings compare with healthy second siblings of children with big medical issues? My anecdotal experience suggests that some of the issues you describe are typical in this situation too. E.g. Thinking that parents care more for the older sibling and it is all about them.
Very similar in many ways
Uncomfortable content to be sure.