You see, I apparently, at age 3, could not make the L sound very easily. My speech impediment, combined with unavoidably adorable dimples, made for face-melting cuteness. The newscasters couldn't get enough.

They key to "I'm gonna save my brother's wife," though, was that it not only combined preciousness and comedy, but it also implied consent.

I was the "natural" precursor, one might say, to the "unnatural" saviour sibling. My birth did not involve any genetic technologies, rather it was the end product of an accidental pregnancy almost terminated. While my mother was pregnant with me, my older brother was diagnosed with a rare disease requiring a near-perfect match for a bone-marrow transplant. I've never been told whether the abortion didn't go through because of my mother's flirtation with religion or because of this new information. All I know is that I was born, I gave bone-marrow, saved my brother's "wife," and the public loved it.

Our luck is rare. Families now are trying to reproduce our experience with a little help from technology, choosing embryos with the correct genetic makeup to match dying siblings. The general public does not seem to be looking on the "spare parts" baby with the same adoration that my toddler self received. I was a whole human being, with bonus dimples, and these babies are buckets of organs.

The bbc's paraphrase of the report by the Human Genetics Commission notes that:

These cases have also been called "designer babies" and have created as storm of ethical questions around reproductive and medical technologies. There is even an allergy cookbook which takes a stand on spare parts babies. But a comment left in an open debate on the bbc news website sums up much of the oppossition:

There are myriad arguments against the technology and practice, many of which are contained in this comment. Most rely upon a "sanctity of life" notion, some see a short step from reprogenetics to eugenics, and like the commenter above, call for "nature to take its course."

And, of course, there is the means/ends argument. It would seem that no one in the debate wants humans to be treated as simply means to ends. But the idea that anyone can avoid being a means to someone else in their lifetime seems bunk to me. And Kant's categorical imperative asks us to see a person as not merely a means, but also an end in his or her self, and the argument from the pro-spare parts babies side argues that making temporary means out of children does not prevent them from being their own ends.

Every person is born destined for some kind of labor. To work on the farm. To take care of parents in their old age. To follow in someone's footsteps. As the playmate to a first child. To take place in beauty pageants.

One comment left in the same debate included a useful typo:

The argument from the other side is that the "spare parts baby" is treated as a pile of organs, not as a human being. But this comment, through an accidentally placed negation, argues that the practice ethically checks out if the baby is "not more than a clump of tissues." Should the baby not be a baby? If we treat it as a clump of tissues need we worry about its consent, its humanness, its wellbeing?

I don't think I advocate that approach. But I am curious about my being seen as a cute cuddly do-gooder and not an organ bank, because I was born "naturally"--and one might better say accidentally. I believe there are important ethical implications of this tecnhology, sure. I worry about saying "yes" to gene therapy and saviour siblings and "no" to enhancements. But some of the distinctions made between "naturally" born babies and what we might as well call "clone" babies for all the fear of them are baffling to me. Bone marrow transplants with children are not the issue, but the production of children for such purposes. Does one pretend the baby is had for whatever purpose babies are supposed to be had (I would ask, what means or ends constitute the normal reason for reproduction?) and then, after birth, if it seems to show some awareness, go ahead?

For the Human Genetics Commission it might be an issue of the degree of pain, and whether or not the sibling is asked to repeat donations. The report reads:

I gave bone marrow. It was uncomfortable. My father once kept me from falling off our roof and in doing so sliced his arm open on the corner of a roof tile. I also had braces when I was a kid and that was both physically and emotionally uncomfortable. The issue is one of consent, my father consents to prevent me from falling and to experience pain in doing so. But did I consent to get braces? No. And did I consent when I said "I'm gonna save my brother's wife?"

The sad part is I want the issue to be one of consent. But I don't really think it is. It's the same debate about when a baby is a baby, what is "natural" or "sacred," and the same fear of humans becoming non-human animals (remember that animals are already donors, clones, test subjects). Yikes.