Reflection of My Sister’s Keeper: Film Analysis

“My Sister’s Keeper” is a drama film indicating a story about two sisters: Kate who is battling cancer and the other, Anna, who is a perfect donor to keep her sister alive. In the story, Kate Fitzgerald, the elder sister, is diagnosed of having acute promyelocytic leukaemia. In order to save their children, the parents decide to have another daughter, Anna Fitzgerald, as Kate saviour sister through vitro fertilization. Anna is genetically match to her older sister and is available to donate organ, blood as well as tissue to Kate in order to fight against the cancer. For all of her young life Anna has been conceived by her parents to help Kate and has provided what Kate requires. However, there is an impact on the situation when Anna refuse to compromise with her parent when she is 11. Kate goes into renal failure when she is 15 and Anna will be asked to donate one of her kidneys to Kate. Realising that losing one of the kidney will be a huge limitation on living activities, Anna refuse to donor her kidney, and even sue them for medical emancipation, making her parent to be shocked especially Sara Fitzgerald, the sisters’ mother who keen on keeping Kate alive, disappointed and furious with her decision.

The movie indicates issues related to genetic engineering and saviour siblings. Genetic pre-diagnostics are being used increasingly to make sure that the new-born babies are healthy. It has been a trend that parents will know about their children condition and make sure they have a healthy baby who is free from genetic diseases. Besides, advances embryonic science have allowed people to manipulate the babies traits, creating the possibility for the creation of designed babies with certain physical characteristics, or in the movie story, to have organs and tissues that make them as suitable donors to their family. Babies who are designed for donating their organ are known as “saviour babies.” They are born to help their siblings to fight from diseases such as Anna Fitzgerald in the movie. Real saviour babies have been used as donors of stem cells at birth to their siblings who usually facing untreated disease. “My Sister’s Keeper” has indicate the possibility of social issue brought up by the genetic engineering, and also try to describe the balance between the rights of every individuals, especially the saviour siblings whose life are valued to saving other people.

Saviour sibling is a child who is born to provide organ or cell to his/her sibling who is facing fatal disease. It seems to be an effective solution for treating the disease, however, it may exploit the value of life as well as freedom and rights of the donor child. In the movie, Anna is brought to the world as a donor to her elder sister. In medical aspect, Anna is the clone of Kate, as they have the same gene sequences and Anna is available to donate her organ to Kate without the risk of rejection reaction. However, this arise the issue of the ethics of using a sibling's body as a supplier for another sibling. According to the principle of human rights, Anna parents should not conceived her or even forcing her to help Kate by giving her part of her body. In fact, the aim of giving birth to Anna has been a blunder as the parent have belittled Anna’s life from the very beginning. The child may also face psychological effects when they realise that they are not born for himself but to save his sibling. Negative emotion may build up if they believe that their value is solely for their body part, rather than their own value.

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The movie also indicates the issue brought up by the genetic industry. Gene is the unit of heredity. A tiny section of our DNA double helix molecule form a gene through encoding instruction in order to produce a significant protein, which may function as growing material, enzyme or repairing tissue. Since different combination of DNA codes may produce genes in different sequences, living organisms usually have their unique characteristic, such as different eye colour for human and different fur colour for cat. Besides the appearances, genes also play the important role of manipulating the organisms’ behaviour in different situation as well as the growing factor of each individuals. In order to identify human sequences with their gene, gene studying has been a popular topic in both scientific and ethic.

Genetic industry has been a grace for human as it bring a lot of benefits. Recent years, scientists have put a lot of effort in studying the gene sequences and carry out the Human Genome Project, which aims to identify and map human genome. With the development of this project, scientists also develop different genetic techniques such as clone, gene therapy, and even designed birth. These new invented techniques have been a huge impact in medical field, as they provide the recognition and treatment of many incurable disease and inherited disorder. People have the opportunity to predict the specific disease through genetic test and therefore find out the effective treatment. Furthermore, the lack of compatible organ donor also have the opportunity to be solved by cloning technique. Since everyone have unique gene sequences, a compatible donor is usually hard to be found and rejection reaction in blood and organ donation occurs frequently. Our immunity system will detect, reject and destroy the incompatible transplanted tissue. With the help of cloning, scientists can help patient to create a new organ or tissue with identical gene sequences, shorten the time finding for compatible donor. Besides, cloning also help to increase the amount of endanger species, maintaining the stability of different species. With the ability of manipulating gene, people may solve a lot of issues effectively.

On the contrary, the genetic industry also bring up some conflict and drawback to people. The issue of cloning has been long debated as it raise different new issue both scientific and ethic. Cloning is still an immature technique as researchers does not clearly recognise the detail of the development of clone. In the process of transcription and translation of gene, mutation may occur, making the individuals to be different or undergo different growing pathway with each other. Transplanting cloned organ or tissue may have the high risk of development of cancer as the cell used for cultivating the new organ need to undergo large amount of mitosis, increasing the risk of the mutation of cell into tumour. Other than that, cloning may lead to ethic and social issue such as exploitation individuals’ rights and the chance of evolution. In the story, Anna is born for the aim to donate her organ to her sister. Anna’s value has been degraded as an organ donor rather than an individual with own rights. Instead, she is actually an ordinary girl who should enjoy her childhood without any constrain. The value of life of clone will be exploited and the society tend to be fragmented due to the hierarchy. As clone usually created for specific purpose, people would categorize them and treat them with unequal and bias due to their conflicted identity. Besides, cloning will making us more difficult to involve to adapt to new environment. Mutation of gene may provide species the opportunity to survive in new environment. Since cloning tend to produce identical individuals, species have no opportunity to undergo the evolution and will remain the same characteristic, which makes them easier to be extinct as they cannot survive in the new environment and eliminated by the nature. In short, cloning may be a new technique for us that bringing short profits. Long-term impact that brought up by cloning should have a further study and discussion.