Last week, the Human Genome Research Project at Otago University made several recommendations that, once more, remind us that some difficult questions cannot be forever ignored, The Dominion Post writes.
In a new report, it proposed the genetic testing of all newborn babies as well as greater access to embryo tests to allow the harvesting of what it calls “saviour siblings”, the potential creation of a genetically matching baby whose cells can be used to cure a sick brother or sister.
The report comes at the same time the Bioethics Council is consulting the public on the ethics of “pre-birth” testing – that is, undertaking tests on a foetus to identify a range of possible illnesses, such as cystic fibrosis.
The pros and cons of such research are both profound and entirely feasible. Regrettably, however, most people shy from these issues because they are painted all shades of grey, not black and white.
Do parents want to know, before their child is born, whether he or she is predisposed to type 2 diabetes, multiple sclerosis or alcoholism? And if they do, what would they do with the knowledge? A parent, faced with early news that their much-wanted child-to-be will have Down syndrome, for example, must choose to abort or proceed, with all the ramifications caused by a disabled child.
Pre- and post-natal screening are, however, but two among a raft of medically based ethical dilemmas that face not only parents and medics, but the entire community. They remain unanswered because they are easier to ignore. But that doesn’t make them go away.
Who, for example, should have preference for publicly funded healthcare – those who can afford private insurance or those who cannot? Should a kiddy with glue ear take precedence over a granny with a failing heart? Should an athlete whose illness results from steroid abuse receive taxpayer-funded care? Should a gang member burned in a P-lab explosion get expensive skin grafts and physiotheraphy when a law-abiding taxpayer with varicose veins tumbles further down a public hospital waiting list?
What of the person, chronically disabled through disease, who must meet the heavy costs of having their home and vehicle modified to give them some independence when, had they had an accident, ACC would have met the cost? Is that fair?
When – if ever – will Kiwis accept genetic modification done in pursuit of improved health? How is it, when Maori lore holds that animal and human cells should not mix, that some diabetic Maori are willing to use synthetic insulin, a treatment originally derived from pigs? Is that called “situational ethics”? Would those who rail against stem cell research – and not only that part of it involving embryonic stem cells – abandon principle were their son or mother to benefit from such research?
Such issues abound in the field of health. Allowing parents to test for disease before their infant enters the world or to create a sibling simply in order to save an older and unwell child are only two of them. Ignoring the ethics of such policymaking will not make the issues vanish into the ether and cannot be entrusted wholly to bureaucrats and politicians.
More here.
