ARE SAVOIUR SIBLINGS MORALLY JUSTIFIED A saviour sibling is a child selected as a result of genetic screening to have some innate

characteristic that will help save the life of an existing brother or sister. The proposal to enshrine (to enclose) the principle of such saviour siblings in British law is another of the controversial elements of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill which MPs will be voting on in coming weeks. Unease centres on three areas. Philosophically it involves looking at the saviour sibling as a mere instrument or means to an end rather than as a child created for its own sake. Physically or psychologically the business of donation might harm the second child. Theologically it raises, again, the question of when human life begins, since it can only be done by creating a number of embryos and discarding those that are not suitable either because they are found to have the same family gene which caused the elder siblings disease or because they turn out not to have the gene which would make them match as a potential donor. The philosophical objection seems flawed because there are so many overlapping reasons in nature, some admirable, some distinctly dodgy, for having a child. Few babies are conceived only for a single one of the reasons in our opening list. The argument that saviour siblings treat the offspring to be born as a commodity would only hold if the child were merely treated as a tissue farm and then killed or given away once it had served its therapeutic purpose for its elder brother or sister.