Parents of a dead soldier are allowed to use their sperm to have a grandchild

For the family of Peter Zhu, a 21-year-old military cadet who died as a result of a skiing accident, the family legacy is one of the fundamental pillars. That's why they filed an order with the judge to allow them to use frozen semen from your dead child to have a grandchild before pregnancy. And they succeeded: a New York court accepted his request.

"The parents are the right parties to make decisions regarding the disposition of Peter's genetic material," said Judge John Colangelo. In his resolution, he explained that will not impose any kind of restriction on the use of the sampleeven if they plan to use it for "procreation purposes".

Young Zhu died Feb. 23 on a ski slope at the US Military Academy at West Point. Although they were treated urgently, the doctors could not reverse the situation: they declared it with brain death. The soldier had fractured the spinal cord.

A month later, while they were in a vegetative state, the boy's parents asked the hospital to initiate a procedure to extract a sperm sample. Since then, it has been stored in a local bank.

Given the criticism received, family members explained that Zhu had made it clear that I wanted to have five children. In the brief submitted to the Court, they said that their dream was to get married before the age of 30 and to found a large family.

In turn, parents emphasized the need to preserve the legacy of their son. "for deeply cultural reasons". Following the guidelines of Chinese culture, the young soldier was the only one to be able to pbad on the name to future generations, since he was the only child of the couple.

When the court decision was heard, several academics criticized this position and claimed that the case is "an ethical control". One of them was Art Caplan, professor of bioethics at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of New York. For the specialist, there is no established system for asking people what they want to do with their genetic material after death.