Catherine was born with Diamond Blackfan Anaemia, a rare blood disorder in which few, if any, red blood cells are produced by the bone marrow, causing anaemia.
She has to endure a gruelling regime of medical treatments to boost her red blood cells, but it’s by no means perfect. A quarter of patients die before they reach the age of thirty five.
A bone marrow transplant from a saviour sibling could save her, but what are the ethical considerations of doing so?
"I am surprised to hear people saying that there is no benefit to the mother or the sibling in giving the sick child a transplant which (with luck) will mean she no longer has to take continual transfusions and infusions. Clearly they have never experienced life in a family with a continually ill child.
As far as I can see, the only balance is between the potential risk to the donor and the likely benefit to the recipient - if the donor is put at serious risk and the donor is unlikely to survive, then maybe you do not want to go ahead.
(In our family's case there was no treatment that would have made me a healthy child, so the issue did not arise.)" Carole
"I found your exploration of the issues in this case well considered and balanced. If only you had considered all of the issues though. A critical consequnce of the series of interventions on behalf of Catherine is the cost to the NHS and the fact that every penny spent on her, in a closed financial system, is money witheld from another patient. I am not arguing that this means that she should not have been treated, but that we shy away from facing head on that no case can be considered in isolation, but has to be considered in the light of all competing demands on NHS resources." Linda
"The way in which cord blood collection was described seemed to imply that this was an unwise thing to do. Both The Anthony Nolan Trust and the NHS cord blood programmes carry out successful cord blood collections on a daily basis with a view to providing unrelated stem cell transplants for patients requiring a bone marrow transplant. This is a recognised technique carried out across the world to great success and I would encourage any pregnant woman to consider donating her cord blood to a public bank to be used to help save a life; otherwise this material will simply be disgarded." David
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