Would you let one twin die to save the other?

Recently, a mother had to make the difficult decision to refuse treatment for one unborn twin to save the other. Difficult choices for expecting couples are likely to become more and more pressing with the advent of a prenatal test for autism considered in the Guardian this week. The cloning and designer baby debates may have been around for a while, and for those of you that haven’t read it yet, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go presents an unsettling image of where cloning could take us. But the ethics of designer babies to save siblings are still as contested as ever, and this article on the ethics of the instrumentalization of the donor child is a good introduction for Philosophers, Lawyers and Medics to the field of medical ethics.