Fiction illuminating ethics
As most of you will know, all my novels explore ethical issues in medicine in an accessible form. So my antennae twitched big time when I saw a trailer to Playing Nice, a series on ITV/STV where a couple were being told that the little boy they had brought home from the hospital was not their biological son.
It’s a psychological thriller set in the fabulous landscape of the Cornish coast with its rugged cliffs and crashing waves (my homeland!); not altogether believable but it doesn’t need to be to hold the attention and exercise the mind.
In a nutshell:
Theo was born prematurely and cared for in a Neonatal Unit (again, my world!!) alongside another baby boy, David, and somehow the boys have been swapped. The children are now three years old so this discovery tears at their very roots. When the scenario moves from the formal legal to the personal with the appearance of the other father at their door, apparently keen to negotiate a mutually agreeable arrangement, there are big questions to be answered, and it soon becomes clear that the two couples are worlds apart – temperaments, home circumstances, material possessions, approach to parenting, expectations. Different in every way except that all four adults love these children – who’re played by two enchanting little boys! The ensuing unequal legal and psychological battles eat away at relationships and undermine trust, and the underhand shennanigans lead to dangerous and threatening situations.
Irrespective of the limitations of the adaptation, the storyline offers plenty of challenge:
Would you give up a child whom you’ve raised for three years?
Does biology trump years of nurturing and loving?
Whose interests take precedence?
Who should decide?
Can such situations ever be resolved satisfactorily without involving professionals?
What factors in a person’s background should be regarded as rendering them unsuitable to parent a child?
Is it fair to instantly suspend the professionals caring for the babies who were swapped?
Should there be a formal inquiry?
Does a history of mental illness sway the decision?
At what age should the child have a casting vote?
Does/should a higher standard apply to parents taking a non-biologically related child into their homes?
And so on, and so on. Questions raised not just by circumstances as improbable as in this drama, but in cases of fostering and adoption, of child abuse, or indeed in any circumstance where vulnerable children are involved or at risk. OK, the critics and nitpickers will gripe, but nevertheless the drama serves a very useful function, so I salute JP Delaney who wrote the book on which it’s based, and Grace Ofori-Attah who adapted it for the small screen.
Terrifying history as fiction If at first you don’t succeed …