Today's post is an excerpt from a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning Newsday reporter Beth Whitehouse. Her five-part front-page series "The Match," which was the basis for this book, won numerous awards, including the American Association of Sunday and Feature Writers First Place for Narrative Writing, a National Association of Science Writers Award, and a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism in Service to Children. Whitehouse is an adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University.

Beth Whitehouse appeared on the Diane Rehm show this morning to discuss savior siblings and The Match. You can listen via the show's podcast.

May 24, 2006

Stacy Trebing yanked off the yellow paper hospital gown that covered her shorts and T-shirt, unhooked the surgical mask from behind her ears, and stuffed both items into the garbage pail in the entryway of her daughter's hospital room. She'd been at her three year-old daughter's bedside practically every minute of the past ten days.

She needed a breather.

The next morning, Stacy's daughter would have a bone marrow transplant, a medical procedure that would either cure her or kill her. Every minute since Katie's birth had been leading to this day. Everything Stacy and her husband, Steve, had done, every decision they'd made, had propelled them here.

Including the most controversial of their choices: to create a new human being they had selected as an embryo because he genetically matched a critical portion of his sister's DNA.

That one-year-old baby would be brought into the hospital the following morning to donate the life-changing bone marrow that was the only chance to heal his sister. Christopher Trebing was born to be a member of the Trebing family, but he was also born with a job to do. He would be put under general anesthesia while a doctor inserted needles repeatedly into his hips and siphoned the tissue that could repair Katie's ailing body.

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