Von Max Müller
Sara and Brian decide to become a savior sibling in order to keep their daughter Kate alive, who suffers from cancer.
A few years later thirteen-year-old Anna – Kate´s savior sibling, has to undergo several procedures, including frequent blood withdrawals and a painful bone marrow extraction, to help keep Kate alive.
At a certain point Anna decides to visit a lawyer named Campbell Alexander and asks him to represent her. Anna tells Campbell that she wants to sue her parents for medical emancipation. Kate, her sister, is in the end stages of kidney failure, and Anna wants to file the lawsuit so she will not have to donate a kidney to Kate. Touched by the story, Campbell agrees to represent Anna for free.
Anna`s mother, Sara, becomes furious with Anna as she cannot understand her decision. Brian, however, partially understands Anna’s point of view and recognizes that she would not have brought a lawsuit unless she were genuinely unhappy.
Kate out of a sudden becomes seriously ill and must be hospitalized. Dr. Chance, her oncologist, says she will die within a week. Anna refuses to change her mind about the lawsuit, however. At the hearing, Sara decides she will represent herself and Brian, as she turns out to be a lawyer too. Consequently, Brian takes Anna to stay with him at the fire station where he works to give Anna some distance from her mother.
At the trial, both Sara and Campbell question witnesses, including one of the doctors familiar with Kate’s medical history, and both are effective at different times. Reluctantly, Anna takes the stand and admits that she filed the lawsuit because Kate told her to. At the very moment she makes this announcement, Campbell has an epileptic seizure and collapses.
Anna explains that Kate asked Anna not to donate her kidney because she was tired of being sick and waiting to die. Anna also admits that while she loves her sister, a part of her wanted Kate to die, too, so that she could have more freedom with her life. Judge DeSalvo decides to grant Anna medical emancipation and gives Campbell medical power of attorney over her.
On the way to the hospital, Campbell and Anna get into a serious car accident. At the hospital, the doctors tell the family that Anna has irreversible brain damage. Campbell tells the doctors to give Anna’s kidney to Kate. Kate narrates the epilogue, set in 2010. She discusses the grief her family went through after Anna’s death, and the fact that she blames herself. She knows, however, that she will always carry Anna with her.
Anna`s story shows that a savior sibling can save a life indeed but that costs the freedom of somebody like Anna.
A lamb fighting slaughter
Have you ever thought about suing your parents? You would think such a thought would never actually become reality, no way how you would twist it. However, a girl called Anna Fitzgerald did. She was born with the only purpose to sacrifice herself to save her sister: And now she’s taking her chances.
Using Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis to create Savior Siblings
Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) is one of the best procedures to diagnose any sort of genetic defects or chromosomal issues within embryos. Besides sorting the genetic issues, the process further allows you to diagnose and determine the embryo’s quality during its developmental stages. The primary goal is to distinguish those embryos that are reproductively competent and are capable of producing a healthy child from those that cannot. Due to the advancement of medical technology, saviour siblings, as a further use of PGD, transformed from a mere idea to a feasible alternative in 2000 when the first baby, Adam Nash, was engineered or designed to save his older sister from a rare form of anaemia. When Adam was born a stem cell transplantation was done immediately and infused into his sisters Molly’s circulatory system. Molly showed improvement in 4 weeks and in three years her immune system was normal.
Do saviour children have rights?
The 13-year-old Anna Fitzgerald coined headlines of all kind of newspapers worldwide over the last weeks by suing her parents to fight for her rights. She was genetically created to save her from cancer suffering sister Kate Fitzgerald. Anna endured the pain her whole life that comes with the for Kate life-saving donations. She doesn’t want to aid with this anymore, since the next donation could be life-changing and has fatal potential. That’s why Anna sues her parents in cooperation with the celebrity lawyer Campbell Alexander. In court, they’re fighting for Anna’s right to decide over her own body. In legal terms, this is called medical emancipation.
The treatment options of APL
Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is a unique subtype of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). It is caused by a gene rearrangement concerning the 15 and 17 chromosomes, leading to the formation of an abnormal fusion gene called PML/RARα. This gene produces immature white blood cells, and therefore a bone marrow transplant is needed to provide healthy leukocytes.
Interview with the parents of Kate about the lawsuit
Anna Fitzgerald is a savior sibling specifically born to aid her sister Kate who suffers from leukaemia. After the young Anna decided to sue her parent over the right to her own body, we decided to speak with the parents of Anna and hear out their opinion.
Interview with Kate Fitzgerald
Yesterday morning I had the chance to ask a few questions to Kate Fitzgerald, who suffers from Leukemia. As the sister of Anna, a savior sibling, she has got some interesting point of views regarding different topics, for instance the relationship with her parents. The following interview will prove that Kate has a breathtaking mindset and a heart of gold.