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As mentioned in Jason’s recent post, mental_floss makes an appearance in the film My Sister’s Keeper. The movie is based on a novel of the same name by Jodi Picoult. The story line is somewhat reminiscent of a controversial case that hit the headlines almost 20 years ago, which may or may not have inspired Ms. Picoult.
Anissa Ayala was a typical athletic teenager in Walnut, California, that spring of 1988. She’d previously discovered some mysterious lumps around her ankles, but kept mum because of her fear of doctors in general and needles in particular. However, shortly after her 16th birthday that year, she experienced such excruciating stomach pain that her parents took her to the ER over her protests. The teen was subjected to a battery of tests, which included many needles, but little did she know that those punctures would end up being the least of her worries; the specialists came back with a diagnosis of chronic myelogenous leukemia. Anissa’s outlook was grim; radiation and chemotherapy could put the disease in temporary remission, but the treatments would also destroy her bone marrow, and her body would be unable to replenish her red blood cells. Without a bone marrow transplant, her life expectancy was estimated to be at five years at the most.
Anissa was immediately entered into the National Bone Marrow Donor Registry, with no successful matches found. Likewise her older brother and her parents proved to be incompatible. Anissa’s parents were desperate for a solution and decided (despite the one in four odds of a sibling being a compatible donor) to try to conceive another child. The couple had other odds against them as well: Abe Ayala had to first get his vasectomy reversed, a procedure that isn’t always successful, and May Ayala was 43 years old.
Nevertheless, six months later Mary was expecting a baby girl and when an amniocentesis and tissue-typing tests were performed the couple was overjoyed to discover that the child appeared to be a good match for Anissa. Marissa Ayala was born on April 3, 1990, and 14 months later doctors inserted an inch-long needle into her hip in order to retrieve some of her bone marrow to give to her 19-year-old sister.
Anissa is now 37 years old, married and working for the Leukemia &Lymphoma Society. Marissa is a college freshman and thinks of Anissa, 18 years her senior, as more of a “second mother” than a sister. The pair are happy and seem well-adjusted, but that doesn’t mean that their story is without its critics. Even today medical professionals are divided on the issue of conceiving children for this purpose. (Marissa, after all, was unable to actually consent to being a bone marrow donor.) My Sister’s Keeper will probably inspire more of this type of debate.
What are your feelings? As a parent, would you take all possible measures to save a critically ill child? What if you were the sibling – would you readily give up a kidney or other organ?
Comments (12)
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Thanks for posting this, i’m sure the discussion’s going to be fun.
I think it’s ok to concieve children with a purpose…it’s not like the family threw Anissa to the curb after donation.
I think I’d be all right if I knew that I was concieved for the purpose of saving a family member, but then again that’s easy for me to say because it’s not me.
posted by holly on 7-3-2009 at 1:14 am
20 years? Oh my time does fly. This was THE subject of the day for quite a while. You had half the world saying this was folly, unethical, despicable on one side and the other half said, well, I’d try it if my kid were in danger.
At the time, I thought: leave those folks alone; people produce kids for way more frivolous reasons every day.
posted by Miss Cellania on 7-3-2009 at 7:32 am
This is better than having more kids in order to fatten up your welfare check.
posted by Matt on 7-3-2009 at 7:44 am
Or to “save” your marriage!
posted by Christina W. on 7-3-2009 at 9:35 am
I would absolutely give anything possible for my sister. I remember when I was 14 I read an article that a sister had become pregnant for her sister unable to conceive. I offered to carry children for my then 18 year old sister if she ever found out she couldn’t have kids. Thankfully that was never a problem, but I would offer her anything I could to make her life better. If that object saved her life? You bet I would give it to her.
posted by Brandy on 7-3-2009 at 9:42 am
I think it’s definitely a quality of life issue — for both the sick child and the child conceived to help them. If a family can adequately provide for (in both the economic and emotional sense) another child, then there I see no problem with it. It’s definitely a case-by-case situation, though, as I don’t think some families would be able to raise the second child in a healthy way.
posted by Meghan on 7-3-2009 at 10:01 am
Marissa’s in college?? I feel old.
I remember the story being featured in “Reader’s Digest”; I can’t remember if it was a book excerpt or not, but it was basically an oral history of the whole situation. It was clear that the parents truly love Marissa and didn’t just have a baby to save Anissa and then get rid of her. Marissa has to feel really special, knowing that she was born for a purpose.
Also, I’ve always liked that Marissa’s name came from a combination of Mary and Anissa.
posted by Jenn on 7-3-2009 at 1:53 pm
I wonder what they would have done if Marissa had not been a match.
posted by Abiola on 7-3-2009 at 7:47 pm
Children area blessing! With parents who love a child, and are not putting the child in danger, then saving their own child is an act of heroism!
posted by Seamus on 7-3-2009 at 10:37 pm
as a parent, i would do it- but i would love that child all the more for the gift they had given.
as a sibling- there isn’t much i won’t do for my brothers and sister. and if i had been concieved simply to save one of them, i would be totally fine with it.
that is if my siblings or parents weren’t total neglectful, ungrateful jerks.(my real ones aren’t, but hypothetically speaking)
posted by emmiline on 7-4-2009 at 3:46 am
With an older sister with MS and a brother with cancer, I know I would do anything for either of them, and am often stuck in the position where there’s not much I can do other than offer love, humor and support.
I distinctly remember when this story first graced the headlines and the many debates that ensued. Were the parents being selfish? It’s hard to stomach the thought that the father would undergo surgery and the mother endure a pregnancy at 43 to be selfish. I think they wanted to give their daughter a chance at a normal life, and if they were that caring and nurturing, it would be hard to imagine they wouldn’t embrace the new life they were granted regardless of whether or not she had been a bone marrow match for her sister.
It was later in college when a good friend challenged me to come up with an unselfish reason to have a child. That was twelve years ago, and I haven’t been able to yet. But the Ayalas’ story is probably the closest I’ve seen…
posted by Carrie on 7-5-2009 at 9:18 pm
It’s outlandish because we romanticize pregnancy and birth. Ideally, people would only have children out of love. Unfortunately for idealists, even our biology is working against the ideal, for we didn’t evolve to procreate out of love, we evolved to love in order to procreate.
This child was born for a straightforward reason, but essentially, every child is born for a reason whether the parents realize it or not. Procreation is entirely selfish–but that won’t end up in Reader’s Digest.
posted by Mandy on 7-6-2009 at 3:23 pm