Sibling Behaviors Case Study

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Sibling Saviors and the Six Ethical Options as seen in Geisler’s Book Sibling Saviors Suppose a parent has a child suffering from a disease that is slowly killing them, such as acute promyelocytic leukemia, APL, or types of severe anemia to give a general idea. Eventually, their kidneys are going to shut down and despite years of fighting, the only way to keep that child alive is having them hooked up to machines until their organs completely give out and they die or become comatosed, in a vegetative state. All therapies, tests, treatments, and options have been exhausted. Wouldn’t a parent do anything to save their child? After discovering that neither parents nor their siblings are compatible for transfusions or organ donations, the family …show more content…

Legalism is the first characteristic one thinks of when considering the first of these three Christian perspectives on an ethical view, unqualified absolutism. Examples of this are Islam, the Pharisees and Sadducees in the New Testament, the early Christian Church, and other similar institutions. There are universal moral absolutes, laws or rules, and all of them must be obeyed. They are viewed as unwavering statutes that dictate society and life of the individual and these rules cannot be broken without punishment as retaliation. They see that all moral conflicts as superficial and also believe that moral responsibilities have no exclusions and are essential to life, as Immanuel Kant viewed. Lying and murder are seen as lethal to society and must be dealt with quickly, and one cannot lie to save someone’s life. In the case for savior siblings, should this be practiced, moral absolutes dictate that man should not impede on what God has ordained to occur, the child being sick, nor should we ‘play God’ by making a child in a petri dish in a lab. They believe that God will do one of four things for the sick child: He will deliver the parents from the ethical dilemma, God would have/will intervene on the behalf of the family, to heal the child of the sickness or let the child pass quietly, bring the family through the hardship, or He will allow the child to suffer and ultimately die because the child or parents had sinned or done some wrong to cause the disease in the first place. Savior siblings would not even be considered if the parents were to follow the unqualified absolutism philosophies and they would pray for God to heal their child or to let the child pass as peacefully as they

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