“Most babies are accidents, not me. I was engineered, born to save my sister’s life.

My Sister’s Keeper is a novel based movie in 2009 that revolves around the life of Kate, a
cancer patient who was diagnosed of an acute promyelocytic leukemia, an extremely aggressive
form of cancer at the age of two-years-old and her sister Anna who was made to be the
genetically perfect “match” to save her sister’s life. At some point in the story, Anna decided to
sue her parents because she believes that she is deprived of the choices she have when it comes
to her body because of the numerous operations and procedures that she underwent which started
the time she was born in order to preserve Kate’s.
In the movie, there are numerous issues presented that concerns morality. First, which is
the main debate of the movie, is whether genetic engineering is considered morally right or
wrong. The act of the doctor recommending to Kate’s parents about a birth of another child
who could be a “savior sibling” is not only a moral issue but also an ethical one which may
constitute a violation of legal and medical ethics. More so, the decision of Kate’s parents to agree
on the selective breeding also raises a moral question for their main driving reason of conceiving
another child is not to have an addition to the family but mainly to use the child to save their
terminally ill daughter.
Second, is the argument of the right of terminally-ill patients to elect to die. Kate, after a
series of chemotherapy sessions and the recent death of her boyfriend who was also a cancer
patient, started to rebel and lost her will to live. To add, when it was recommended that she has
to undergo a kidney transplant at the expense of Anna, she clearly told her mom that she refuses
to undergo the operation nor any kind of operations in the future. Her personal decision die and
to stop having medical procedures performed on her which her mother strongly denied is a moral
concern for it deals with one’s own life and death. Issues as personal as one’s own life and death
are personal decisions that an individual should make on his or her own. To deny terminally ill
patients the right to deny treatment and to quicken death is a denial of personal decision and
going against a person’s autonomy.
Third is the right of a minor to control his or her own body. Ever since Anna was born,
she was made aware of her purpose of existence- to be her sister’s donor. At less than two years
of age, she started donating tissues and cells to her sister and her parents were consenting for her.
However, the ethical as well as moral dilemma here is, are the decisions made by Sarah and
Brian, Kate and Anna’s parents, to let Anna donate was in the best interest of Anna or they did it
for their own benefit or for Kate’s benefit.
Anna was experiencing psychological altruism which led her to always assume that she
must keep Kate’s interest and welfare first ahead of her own. However, as she grew older, she
realized that the operations made were at her own expense and she wanted to be free and to live to
her best ability. This led her to bringing the issue to the court by filing for medical emancipation
against her parents. Anna’s act was viewed by her mother as a selfish one ,however, is it not a
right of every person, including a child, to act at his or her own best interest. Even at a young age,
Anna has the right of self-determination. She has the right to either decline or accept any medical
procedure to be performed on her and despite her parents, specifically her mother, going against
her autonomy to choose what she would want to be done to her body by trying to force her to
donate her kidney to her sister.
From these three dilemmas, I would like to dwell on the moral act of creating and
engineering Anna to be a ‘savior sibling’. The main reason is basically to save Kate, their
terminally ill daughter. All throughout the story, certain circumstances existed that gradually
affected the moral goodness or evilness of the act itself. First is Anna’s welfare- her health, her
freedom and her right to her own body. Despite how good the intention of their parent’s to save her
sister’s life, Anna is her own person. She is not owned by her parents nor her sister and she has a
right over her own body. Situations such as when she was hospitalized due to the side effects of
giving away her blood or marrow to her sister or when she choose not to attend a summer camp
because her sister might need her were just few of the scenarios that stand around the act of being a
savior sibling and led to compromising her own interest. Another interesting circumstance is the
wish of Kate to no longer have Anna as a donor. Her decision to longer undergo any operation
nor accept anything from Anna completely controverts the fact of Anna’s alleged purpose in life,
to be her sister’s keeper. When Kate decided not to let Anna undergo any operation in her favor,
this decision reduced the purported moral evilness of the act of making Anna a savior sibling.
To add, at some point in the movie, Sara, Kate and Anna’s mother, acting in her own interest to
save Kate and being so blinded to everything in order to just keep her daughter alive is a thought-
provoking circumstance because despite how good her main purpose is, it makes you question
whether her acts as mother, as a wife, and as a person in general is still morally acceptable or not.
Genetic engineering or medically known as gene therapy is used as a treatment of serious
human genetic disease. This scientifically advanced treatment has received divided views from the
public particularly when genetic engineering is extended to genetic enhancement or the
modification of the germ cells to be ‘more than human’ in intelligence, strength or beauty.
Various concerns such as, engineering human genes is an unnatural activity, an act of tampering
human nature, disrupting human genetics, and even ‘playing God’ were argued by critics who
view genetic engineering as morally and ethically problematic.
In the case of Anna, she was genetically engineered to cure Kate’s disease. The intent
behind such action is acceptable considering that the genetic intervention made is strictly
therapeutic and curative. A strictly therapeutic intervention whose explicit objective is the
healing of various diseases such as those stemming from chromosomal defects will, in principle,
be considered desirable, provided it is directed to the true promotion of the personal well-being
of the individual without doing harm to his integrity or worsening his conditions of life. Such an
intervention would indeed fall within the logic of the Christian moral tradition. However,
interventions which are not directly curative, such as altering or manipulating the production of
human beings by selecting the sex and pre-determining the qualities is considered contrary to the
personal dignity of the human being, to his integrity and to his identity.