In My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult tells the story of a family who is faced with a tragedy and in turn creates an ethical dilemma without even realizing it. Brian and Sarah Fitzgerald don’t think they will have any more children after Jesse and Kate, but when Kate is diagnosed with leukemia ideas of having another child spark in the minds of the Fitzgeralds. Although one might think the Fitzgeralds would have another child to replace the one they may lose, their plan is to use the child to keep Kate alive. The Fitzgeralds have a doctor genetically select an embryo as a perfect match for Kate and a short nine months later Anna is born so she can be used as “spare parts” every time Kate’s organs fail. The most important issue presented in this book is the fact that Anna was created for the sole purpose of keeping her sister alive. Not only was Anna born for an unethical reason, but she is forced by her parents to undergo the many and sometimes painful medical procedures required to keep Kate alive. The dispute between Anna and her mother, Sarah, portrays this issue best in the book. When Anna becomes old enough to stand up to her parents, she tells them she doesn’t want to donate anymore and fights them in a legal battle for “medical emancipation”. If Anna is granted medical emancipation from her parents so she wouldn’t have to donate anymore, but Kate would die. Sarah makes her decisions with the best intentions, but sometimes the decisions she makes favor Kate more than they do Anna. Sarah’s actions present the issue of whether it is ethical to neglect the rights of one child in attempt to save another child. This book creates an ethical dilemma for me because it’s hard to decide which side of the controversy is morally and ethically correct. On one side you are saving Kate’s life and therefore improving her quality of life, but at the same time Anna’s quality of life is being compromised. On the other side Kate would succumb to her cancer, but Anna would be perfectly healthy and able to carry out her life normally. It’s hard to determine which option is more favorable because they both have pros and cons. In a situation like this it should really be left to be decided by the two people affected by the situation, in this case, Kate and Anna. In end of the book, we find out that Kate actually wanted to die and asked Anna to fight against her parents even though Anna had no problems with donating to her sister to help her live. I identified the most with Anna while reading the book because I can feel for the argument that she presents. She doesn’t want to miss out on things in life, such as playing hockey, that she wouldn’t normally have to if she wasn’t born for the sole purpose of keeping her sister alive. However, if I was in Anna’s situation I would have donated everything I could to my sister to keep her alive. The difference is that Anna had been donating since the day she was born, and I’ve never had to donate anything or give anything up because of it. Since we find out in the end that Anna wanted to donate and that Kate wanted her to fight against it so she could die, I found that I differed from Anna’s character in this aspect of the book. I wouldn’t have listened to my sister and I would have tried even harder to keep her alive. This book could have an impact on readers by raising awareness about cancer, especially leukemia. I knew that leukemia was cancer of the blood, but I didn’t know about the various problems that came with it before I read the book. This book could also cause moral distress for the reader. For example, I struggled with deciding which side of the dilemma I agreed with most. If I could rewrite the book I would make it so Anna lived and she would donate her kidney to Kate so that Kate lived too. I know that Kate wanted to die, but from Anna’s perspective, I would not have let my sister die that I just spent my whole life keeping alive. This probably wouldn’t have made such a dramatic and exciting book, but that’s why I’m studying to be a nurse and not a writer.