Mrs GASH (10:42 AM) —Several months ago I was having a regular catch-up with the CEO of the local division of GPs when we stumbled upon an interesting topic: unintended marriages between siblings and the potential side effects for their children. Some say that the occurrence of this kind of extraordinary situation is on the rise, with the increasing uptake of IVF technologies as well as changing attitudes within our society about children and marriage. It sparked a debate within my office which was fuelled further by a letter from a local doctor who is concerned about the increasing number of patients he is seeing who do not know one or both of their parents and, as a result, have no knowledge of any genetic based illnesses they might be susceptible to. In particular, there are a significant number of women coming to an age where they are at risk of breast cancer and they do not know what genetic diseases their mother or father may have suffered from or died of. As any woman would know, these are the first questions asked when going for a mammogram or to a specialist. Basically, what we are talking about here is the right for a child to know who their father and mother are. There are basic physical, medical and psychological reasons to justify why this information should be available as outlined above, and I will discuss these further. But it should also be said that there are very valid emotional reasons for being able to know as well. After all, what value do we as a society place on a child’s sense of who they are?

To return to the original point, some countries have tried to pre-empt the problem of half-brothers and half-sisters forming a relationship, unaware of their genetic similarity. In seven American states, for example, a marriage licence cannot be issued to a couple before a blood test is carried out to determine whether the couple are related or whether they have any diseases that could be passed on to children. Not all couples who have children are married, and a simple blood test certainly does not answer other questions about one’s own origin either. It just seems to me that to leave the word ‘unknown’ on a child’s birth certificate, or to deprive a child of seeing their original birth certificate prior to it being replaced by an adopted birth certificate, is unjust. I want to encourage anybody who has similar concerns or ideas to contact my office. I do believe this is a very serious situation and it can be alleviated if we try to contact the people concerned. As I said, it is certainly an issue worth debating.