How one answers that question may depend entirely on one’s own sense of morality. The fact that Sara and Brian used science to conceive Anna raises its own set of issues. Sara and Brian intervened in the natural process of pregnancy to choose the specific embryo they wanted to fertilize. They sought an embryo that matched Kate genetically, because they wanted to create a sibling for Kate who could serve as her donor. Although Brian argues in their television interview that he and Sara didn’t choose their baby’s eye color or IQ or any of the other traits that parents often select, they did use the same process involved in selecting those characteristics to choose a different set of characteristics. The ends may have been different, but the means were the same.
Perhaps more importantly, Sara and Brian deliberately created a child as a donor for their existing daughter, Kate. That act lead directly to Sara’s mindset in which she considered her new child not as an individual but essentially as a form of treatment for Kate. Just after Anna was born, Sara’s first words to the doctors were to be careful with the umbilical cord, which they needed for Kate, not to ask about her newborn. Brian says at one point that they intended Anna’s use as a donor to end with her birth, but clearly that didn’t happen. Throughout her life, Anna acted as Kate’s donor, and although her parents did love her and treat her as a person, to some degree her wishes always remained subordinate to Kate’s medical needs.

2. What is the significance of fire in the story?
Both Jesse and Brian have close relationships to fire. Brian, for instance, works as a firefighter, putting out fires and at times saving people from burning buildings. Jesse, we learn, began playing with matches young, possibly because he recognized that fire played a central role in Brian’s career, and he turns out to be the arsonist setting fires all over the city. For both of them, fire represents a destructive and ultimately uncontrollable force, and they often treat it as a symbol of Kate’s cancer. Jesse, because he feels powerless to stop Kate’s cancer, turns to using