blog entry #5

After watching My sister’s Keeper which is a remarkable and heartbreaking movie I try to understand how each of the character manage to make an ethical decision. The mother was hopeless and wanted to save her first daughter, Kate, who had leukemia. Because any of the parents were compatible to be a donor, the only way she could save, Kate, would be to give birth to another child, Anna, who will dedicate her entire life being a donor.  It wasn’t an easy decision for a mother knowing that she could loose her daughter because she is suffering from leukemia and putting Anna into painful treatment in order to save Kate. Kate, who had leukemia, was suffering and believed it was time for her to live the world so she could be free and have a normal life. She was tired of all the treatment she had to go through and preferred to put end on her life. Kate told Anna to stop being her donor and claim to her parents that she didn’t want to help her anymore; Kate didn’t want her parents to know that she wants to give up fighting against the leukemia anymore. Kate believed that by not getting kidney and all those terrible treatments she will be relieve from all this pain and she will also relieve her family that is suffering as well. Anna, who was Kate donor, had to make the decision between keeping on saving her sister life or following her sister will. She finally decided to follow her sister will and made her parents believed she just didn’t want to be a donor and be able to decision for her own body.

I can’t put myself into any characters from this true story because I believe I wouldn’t be able to make the right decision. I have an older sibling and God forbid if this situation was happening in my life I would have been selfish and make the decision to keep on helping my sister to survive. My argument for not following her will will be that she isn’t capable of taking the right decision because of the treatment she is going through. That the treatments are making her weaker and sensible to anything and that she had lost hope on surviving. Taking an ethical decision is hard and a long process because you have to make sure this won’t have a negative impact on anybody else. In this kind of situation it is hard to make the right decision because someone will suffer anyway.