It's Time to Reframe the Savior Sibling Debate

The creation of savior siblings has been the subject of intense ethical debate over the past decade. While ethical concerns might provide clinicians with valid reasons for not providing these clinical services, we suggest that it is more difficult to make a case for physicians not disclosing to the parents of sick children under their care the option of creating a savior sibling. We “test” the ethical objections to savior siblings empirically and conclude that they rely heavily on unsound theoretical or speculative arguments and inappropriately scrutinize parental motives for having children. We contend that empirical evidence makes this moral frame increasingly tendentious, and that debate about savior siblings should be reframed as debate about the ethics of nondisclosure.