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COVER STORY
THE COPENHAGEN POST CPHPOST.DK
30 March - 4 April 2012
Denmark has its first ‘saviour sibling’ RAY WEAVER
first saviour sibling to be good news. Thomas Ploug, a professor at Aalborg University Copenhagen in Ballerup and a member of the Ethics Council, says he believes that it is important that children are brought into the world for their own sake. “I understand the terrible situation of the parents and admire their efforts to help their child,” said Ploug. “But I am worried that this is another case that seems to question the value of individual human life and dignity. This does not rule out the legitimacy of creating a child for the sake of a sibling, but it is important that the parents are aware of the value of each child for its own sake.” The older brother of the child in Aarhus is waiting to receive a transfusion of cells, which were taken from the umbilical cord of his baby brother and will be injected into his bone marrow. The operation is similar to the one that saved the life of Charlie Whitaker, a British boy who suffered a rare genetic condition and was saved by stem cells transplanted from the umbilical cord of his brother Jamie, who was born by in vitro fertilisation specifically to provide a tissue match. The Whitakers had to go to the United States for the procedure that was banned at the time in Britain. Much of the debate surrounding rearing so-called ‘harvest children’ has been about the psychological impact on those children born specifically to save older siblings. Some believe that it is totally unethical to bring a child into to the world to be what they see as a commodity rather than a person. In a paper written around the time of the Whitaker case entitled ‘Should selecting saviour siblings be banned?’, professors Sally Sheldon and Stephen Wilkinson of the Centre for Professional Ethics in the United Kingdom concluded that a ‘saviour child’ may actually develop a deeper sense of self worth than a baby conceived for ‘normal’ reasons. “The fact that the parents are willing to conceive another child to protect the first suggests that they are highly committed to the well-being of their children, and that they will value the second child for its own sake as well,” observed their paper.
Parents conceive baby to rescue seriously ill older child
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OR ANY PARENT it would be a terrible dilemma. Their child is desperately ill with a rare disease and their only hope is to create a compatible donor by having another baby specifically designed to save the first child. Is this a valid reason to bring a child into the world? They are called ‘spare parts babies’ or ‘saviour siblings’ and Denmark now has its first. Aarhus University Hospital recently announced that, after trying for five years, a couple was successful in conceiving a baby whose stem cells could be used to rescue the life of their seriously ill older child. The baby, a boy, is now nine months old. The news has once again sparked the debate surrounding the ethics of designing a child whose principal role is to supply the umbilical cord blood and stem cells needed to save the life of a sibling. “This is groundbreaking,” Dr Jakob Ingerslev of Aarhus University Hospital’s fertility clinic, where the new child was born, told JyllandsPosten newspaper. “It is the first time in Denmark that a child has been born that was conceived to supply the umbilical cord blood that could rescue a sibling.” Ingerslev will not identify the family, but said that they had also conceived a child in 2009 whose blood and tissue matched their older son’s, but decided to abort the pregnancy when it was discovered that the foetus had Down’s syndrome. I n gerslev said that the decision to end the earlier pregnancy proved that the parents were not just looking for a ‘spare parts baby’, but indeed wanted to have another healthy child. “They aren’t just looking for parts,” he said. “Otherwise, they would have kept the Down’s syndrome child.” Not everyone considers Denmark’s
Rejsekort not as cheap as it claims Commuters who use monthly passes may not save as much as the company behind the electronic travelcard says
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HE COMPANY behind the Rejsekort is being accused of misleading customers over the price of using the electronic travelcard, metroXpress newspaper reports. Rejsekort’s website states that commuters using the card to travel up to 38 times a month in Zealand stand to benefit from switching over from monthly passes and the discounted ten-ride Klippekort. But according to calculations made by metroXpress, commuters are actually better off buying a monthly pass if they travel to work and back on public transport more than 15 times in a month. Their calculations show that the Rejsekort can cost between 200 and 800 kroner more a month than a monthly pass when travelling to and from work in a typical 18-day working month. The revelations drew criticism from Michael Randropp, the head of commuter association Pendlerklubben, who argued that the cost of using the Rejsekort needed to be more clearly advertised. “Nowhere does it state to commuters that adding extra trips in the Copenhagen area can quickly make the Rejsekort more expensive than using a monthly pass,” Randropp told metroXpress. The price variations are due to the fact that the Rejsekort’s prices are currently the same as those of a Klippekort. Commuters travelling long distances, over more zones, therefore end up paying much more than a monthly pass if they make just a few more trips every month. Commuters who now travel using a monthly pass will have to wait until 2014 before Rejsekort offers a similar electronic product. Responding to the criticism, Thomas Boe Bramsen, Rejsekort’s head of marketing, argued that there was no need to add warnings for commuters currently using monthly passes. “We have not publicly marketed the travelcard toward customers in the capital area. We’ve only done it through the traffic companies’ membership programmes,” Bramsen told metroXpress. “There we state that there is currently an offer in which customers can travel at Klippekort rates.” The Rejsekort system has been beset by a raft of technical issues that have delayed its introduction by years and nearly doubled its cost, which now stands at a projected 1.4 billion kroner. The electronic travelcard is currently being rolled out in Zealand and northern Jutland, but some areas of the country have announced they are hesitant to adopt it out of fears that it is too costly. (PS)
ONLINE THIS WEEK Opposition criticised for not revealing economic details
Parliament agrees on spending ceilings
Captain of stranded ship was drunk
OPPOSITION party Venstre (V) is under pressure to reveal how they would afford tax breaks that its leader, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, recently said Danes ought to be granted. “It is paradoxical that [Venstre] are so focused on having the government release a 2020 plan while also not releasing their own 2020 plan,”
REGIONAL health services and national and local government will soon be forced to stick to strict spending limits or face sanctions, after the government this week agreed on a new budget law. The government introduced the law partially to address runaway spending by the councils, and mainly to fulfil the require-
THE RUSSIAN captain of a Maltese-flagged oil and chemical tanker that slammed full speed into a sandbar just north of the Øresund Bridge last week on Thursday was drunk. Doctors examining the captain following the incident said he had a blood
Bjarne Corydon (S), the finance minister, told Politiken. Criticism of V – currently the most popular political party thanks to the support of over 30 percent of Danes according to most polls – also came from the other end of the political spectrum, with Liberal Alliance’s tax spokesperson accusing the party of “pure populism”.
ments of the EU’s financial compact treaty that Denmark signed earlier in March. Together with a proposal to grant the government’s financial advisory board, Det Økonomiske Råd, greater power in overseeing government spending, the budget law is expected to pass in parliament by a vast majority.
alcohol level of 0.22 percent – more than four times the legal limit of 0.05 percent. “He was so drunk that the doctor did not dare let him leave the ship using a rope ladder,” Henrik Orye of the Copenhagen Police department told the Newspaq news bureau.
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