Dr. Row Case Analysis

Children fall into the category of individuals of vulnerable populations. Not only they are unable to make a voluntary decision regarding their treatment, or give an informed consent to treatment, but also their lives are valued less than of a mentally and consciously formed adult. Our hospital was faced with a case of baby named Barbie who suffers from an inherited condition that had taken away both of her siblings who were patients in our hospital as well. Already showing indications of liver failure, the baby will not survive more than a year without a suitable donor organ. The baby’s parents are unable to help her with a transplant because both of them have milder versions of the condition. Dr. Doe and Dr. Row have suggested solutions to …show more content…
Row’s proposition to use a Barbie’s step sister’s embryo, “left over” from a human fertility treatment, to clone a human liver for Barbie. Dr. Row has all the necessary legal papers for this procedure on hands, and believes that this experimental procedure will save Barbie’s life by providing a permanent treatment for the condition. If the procedure works, we could eliminate the wait time and risky odds with traditional organ transplants. Since the liver clone would come from the Barbie’s half-sister’s embryo, the chance that it will be rejected by Barbie’s organism is less than if it was obtained from an unfamiliar, not-related to Barbie person. To respond to the letter, our Hospital is going to refer to the risks and concerns which are often brought up when it comes to cloning. We are trying to perform a therapeutic cloning which sole purpose is to create a transplant tissue that is suitable for the recipient. One of the issues in cloning is that it devalues a human life and that people might take their organs for granted. In our case, neither we are trying to clone lungs for a chain smoker, nor we are creating a new baby for the family; what we are doing is providing a cloned liver transplant for the baby with inherited condition whose life depends only on that organ. Therefore, we are not devaluing a human’s life or abusing the purpose of cloning, on contrary, by taking such extreme measures, we are showing the …show more content…
Dr. Doe and Dr. Row are right when insisting on implementing the new procedures instead of doing nothing and letting the Barbie die. The hospital is not obligated to perform any new procedures if it cannot be tested first. Also, the hospital cannot perform any new procedures on Barbie without getting a consent from the parents. In the case, when a procedure is relatively new, the baby becomes a research subject since she will be the first person the procedure will be performed on, and the real outcomes are unknown. But, it seems like, after waiting for the donor and seeing the previous children die, the parents and relatives (the half-sister) are eager to try any treatment that could potentially save the Barbie’s life. Although, we and the parents have best intentions at heart, performing an experimental surgery always involves a lot of risk-taking for the both sides. The hospital must take the full responsibility for the procedure, and explain to the Barbie’s parents all the hypothetical risks and presumable outcomes of the operation. Since the proposed procedures are new, our Institutional Research Board (IRB) is responsible for determining which one of them has an acceptable balance of likely benefits and harms to the baby and to society. Both if the new procedures involve greater than minimal risks for the subject but present the prospect of direct benefit to Barbie. To approve this type of