‘Saviour siblings’ are children who are conceived so that they might provide a transplant to an older sibling with a life-threatening illness. While such cases are a medical rarity, they raise important ethical questions – both for the families that must make a choice about conceiving a saviour sibling, and for society at large. Is this a situation where intense emotions can cloud ethics for parents, and risk devaluing the ‘saviour sibling’ as a person in their own right? Or is it morally justified, especially in cases where parents planned to conceive an additional child regardless? Created as part of a BBC Two series that poses ‘ethical questions through real-life stories’, this short explores the perspectives of two parents and several faith leaders on the ethics of saviour siblings, including one mother who had a daughter that ultimately saved her son’s life.
Video by Mosaic Films
Website: Matters of Life and Death
video
Human rights and justice
Can providing humanitarian aid be illegal? A troubling case from the US-Mexico border
17 minutes
video
Information and communication
Coverage of the ‘balloon boy’ hoax forms a withering indictment of for-profit news
17 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
Wander through the English countryside with two teens trying to make sense of the world
10 minutes
video
Personality
A ‘dumpster archeologist’ reconstructs strangers’ stories via what they’ve discarded
14 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
A Japanese religious community makes an unlikely home in the mountains of Colorado
9 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
‘Everydayness is the enemy’ – excerpts from the existentialist novel ‘The Moviegoer’
2 minutes
video
Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
video
Neuroscience
Dog vision is a trendy topic, but what can we really know about how they see?
11 minutes
video
Biology
An elegy for a dying microbe explores what we really mean by ‘death’
9 minutes