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Informing patients about emerging treatment options: creating “saviour siblings” for haemopoietic stem cell transplant
Author(s) -
Strong Kimberly A
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2009.tb02531.x
Subject(s) - obligation , ignorance , sibling , umbilical cord , stem cell , certainty , meaning (existential) , medicine , daughter , psychology , intensive care medicine , political science , law , psychotherapist , immunology , developmental psychology , biology , epistemology , philosophy , genetics
In June 2008, the ABC screened a television documentary involving a couple who decided to have an additional child in the hope of obtaining umbilical cord blood to treat their daughter who had leukaemia. The couple conceived naturally, meaning that there was a one in four chance that their child would be suitably matched. They seemed to be unaware of technologies that, if successful, could provide a near certainty that the next child would be a matched “saviour sibling”. This story raises questions about whether clinicians have an obligation to discuss emerging and morally contentious treatment options. Ignorance of technology, assumptions about availability, and medical assessment of burdens and benefits may affect attitudes towards treatment options, but they do not justify non‐disclosure of information.