The story of My Sister’s Keeper centers on Anna, a 13-year-old girl who was selected via preimplantation genetic diagnosis to be a tissue donor for her older sister, Kate, who suffers from leukemia. The novel opens as Anna begins to challenge the idea that she is a virtually limitless source of spare tissue for Kate, and follows the family struggle that ensues.

The paperback edition I was reading contains a reader’s club guide, which consists of an author interview and a several pages of questions and topics for discussion. In the interview the author states:

sometimes researchers and political candidates get so bogged down in the ethics behind it and the details of the science that they forget completely we’re talking about humans with feelings and emotions and hopes and fears . . . like Anna and her family. I believe we’re all going to be forced to think about these issues within a few years, so why not first in fiction?

Indeed, My Sister’s Keeper raises a number of bioethical issues - designer babies, parental decision making, children as tissue donors - in a way that, to my eye, reads genuinely. Picoult has done us a great service in writing this novel. I recommend it highly.

The beaches in Chicago opened today. Oddly, the high temperature today is predicted to be 55. Worse, the water temperature is reported to be 41. Happy hypothermic holiday weekend!

As you prepare for the holiday weekend, maybe you’re looking for something to read while laying on the beach. Cast of Shadows is a debut novel (thriller) that gives a vivid picture of what the world might be like if cloning to produce children becomes as widely accepted and practiced as in vitro fertilization (IVF) has become. Christina Bieber Lake, associate professor of English at Wheaton College, reviewed the book for The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity in 2005.

Happy reading! (And stay warm)

As you may know, I’m one of the contributors to Everyday Theology. The Spring ‘08 Journal of Religion and Popular Culture carries a review by Bucknell University’s Paul Macdonald. I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, but it’s hard not to like the following:

The best essays, in my view, engage the most substantive and provocative cultural texts and trends: for example, The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (a text) and transhumanism (a trend), both raise important theological questions about the nature of the human person as well as the future of the human person, and thus rightly deserve more serious theological attention.