Hemophilia: A Moral Dilemma

Hemophilia places stresses of a financial, social and psychological nature on both the victim’s family and the community. Decisions about having children, or paying for rehabilitative or preventive therapy with public funds, involve the resolution of value conflicts at a personal and at a societal level.

Moral/ethical dilemmas based on these and similar questions were constructed and administered to a group of non-hemophiliac classroom teachers. Our work indicates that these dilemmas are effective in presenting content knowledge about hemophilia problems and that they are able to increase one’s level of moral reasoning. This increases the probability that all possible consequences of an action will be carefully considered, although it does not lead automatically to a predetermined resolution of the dilemma.

The applicability of these dilemmas for use in genetic counseling of hemophilia families or to develop knowledge among parents and friends of new hemophiliacs will be explored.