I've just started my latest book, and I can tell already it's going to be a fascinating read, and one that could engender a lively medical ethics debate.
The book is My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult.
Here's an excerpt from the Publisher's Weekly description from Amazon:
From Publishers Weekly
The difficult choices a family must make when a child is diagnosed with a serious disease are explored with pathos and understanding in this 11th novel by Picoult (Second Glance, etc.). The author, who has taken on such controversial subjects as euthanasia (Mercy), teen suicide (The Pact) and sterilization laws (Second Glance), turns her gaze on genetic planning, the prospect of creating babies for health purposes and the ethical and moral fallout that results. Kate Fitzgerald has a rare form of leukemia. Her sister, Anna, was conceived to provide a donor match for procedures that become increasingly invasive. At 13, Anna hires a lawyer so that she can sue her parents for the right to make her own decisions about how her body is used when a kidney transplant is planned. Meanwhile, Jesse, the neglected oldest child of the family, is out setting fires, which his firefighter father, Brian, inevitably puts out.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
I'm in the first few dozen pages of the book and already sucked in. I'm sure this kind of "use" of a sibling happens regularly in the real world. (In fact I think when I was writing about that poor girl Haley form Arizona last year her sibling was indeed a donor to her.) However, has a similar lawsuit ever really happened? Anybody know such a case?
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