Thursday, April 8th, 7pm

Pulitzer Prize-winning Newsday reporter BETH WHITEHOUSE will speak about and sign her new book, The Match: "Savior Siblings" and One Family's Battle to Heal Their Daughter.

Beth will be joined at this event by the Long Island family at the center of this book, THE TREBING FAMILY. Join us for this fascinating discussion and Q&A, and meet Katie, her parents, and the brother who saved Katie's life.

My Sister's Keeper in nonfiction: The Match chronicles a family's quest to cure their daughter's debilitating disease by creating a sibling who could help her.

In The Match, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Beth Whitehouse tells the story of the family of Katie Trebing, a young girl born with a rare form of anemia that prevents bone marrow from producing red blood cells. Without a transfusion each month, Katie would die. But when the doctor tells her parents that over the years the transfusions could destroy her organs and that the only cure for Diamond Blackfan anemia is a genetic match, the Trebings face a tough decision. Using preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and in vitro fertilization, they would create a "savior sibling" for Katie, a complex process rife with setbacks and pitfalls.

Whitehouse follows the Trebings each step of the way as they make the nail-biting decisions to create a genetically matched sibling and proceed with the risky transplant that could kill Katie rather than save her. With the family's dramatic and emotional story as an entry point, Whitehouse delves head-on into the murky bioethics surrounding PGD: Is it ethical to create a life for the purpose of saving another? Who will protect the medical interests of the "savior sibling" created by scientific manipulation? And who will object if the child is later called upon to donate, say, an organ?

The Match is a timely and provocative look at urgent issues that can only become more complex and pressing as genetic and reproductive technologies advance.

Beth Whitehouse is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for Newsday. 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.

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