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Mohammed
Taranissi
Director, Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre
My talk is going to
be rather brief because my take on the issue of 'saviour siblings'
is very simple. I have always believed that in modern society,
medicine has got an important role. And that role, as I see it,
is to try to help people who have got illnesses and to find a
cure for those illnesses and, even better, to prevent those illnesses
from occurring in the first place. Therefore, any procedure which
seeks to treat or prevent illness is not an ethical problem.
This is the approach
that we took when we were faced with the Whitaker case. Effectively,
the Whitakers were asking us to try and help them complete their
family by having another child. This fact is often forgotten in
the debate: the child was always wanted by his parents, he was
always on the cards. The child was not created just to serve a
particular purpose. It is also worth remembering, however, that
every child that is brought into this world for a number of reasons.
We often have children for reasons like strengthening a marriage
or maybe providing an existing child with a brother or a sister.
There is always a reason why children are brought into this world,
but that doesn't mean it is the only reason.
What we have done through
PGD and tissue typing is not something that nature would have
not been able to do. The Whitakers did try to conceive a tissue-matched
baby naturally and they could have tried again. Maybe, four or
five years down the line and perhaps three babies later, they
might have had the baby that was the exact match. All that we
did was to just to increase the odds. Instead of having a one
in five chance of having a baby that is an exact tissue match,
we have made this roughly a 98 percent chance.
Some of the criticisms
that have been levelled against PGD and tissue typing is based
on wrong assumptions. Some assume that there are risks associated
with PGD. No-one has ever told us what those risks are. ItŐs not
good enough to say that we donŐt know the risks, therefore we
shouldnŐt really do this. ThatŐs a scare tactic and it confuses
the issue in the minds of the public. There is no evidence of
risks associated with developmental problems in babies that are
born through PGD. To say, as the HFEA does, that PGD and tissue
typing should only be available when we are providing a technique
that will benefit the embryos, is also based on the wrong assumption.
Embryos do not benefit from PGD. What PGD tells us is whether
or not the embryo is normal. If it is abnormal, there is nothing
that PGD can do to change that. If the embryo is normal, isnŐt
not normal because of the PGD. It already was normal. PGD is simply
about selecting embryos on the basis of existing characteristics.
In the case of the
Hashmis, it was a two-step procedure. They checked that the embryo
was normal and then they did the HLA matching. With the Whitakers,
we started with an embryo that we already knew was normal. The
HFEA says that the two-step procedure is fine, but the one-step
one is not because PGD is too risky to warrant it being used on
a normal embryo. But if you are using the two-step procedure (trying
to check for the HLA matching and for genetic normality) you may
occasionally end up removing more than one cell which could double
the risks.
This issue is very
simple in my mind. We are only trying to help people. I would
suggest that any one of you, if you had a child that is suffering
every day (who needs injections every day and hospital admissions
every two weeks for lengthy blood transfusions) and you knew that
there is a treatment out there that can help relieve that suffering,
what would you do? I think every one of us knows the answer to
that.
Copyright Progress Educational Trust
This transcript cannot be reproduced without prior permission.
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