:: Running from the Thought Police ::

:: Sunday, February 20, 2005 ::

This'll Create Problems For The Ethicists

From CNN.com:

Abla el-Alfy, a consultant in pediatric intensive care, told Reuters at the hospital in Benha, near Cairo, that Manar Maged was in a serious but improving condition after the procedure to treat her for craniopagus parasiticus -- a problem related to that of conjoined twins linked at the skull.

...As in the case of a girl who died after similar surgery in the Dominican Republic a year ago, the second twin had developed no body. The head that was removed from Manar had been capable of smiling and blinking but not independent life, doctors said.

Video footage provided by the hospital, a national center in Egypt for children's medicine, showed Manar smiling and at ease in a cot with the dark-haired "parasitic" twin, attached at the upper left side of the girl's skull, occasionally blinking.

So, was the second, parasitic head a human being, and if so, was it ethically/morally right to kill it?

:: The Squire 1:19 AM :: email this post :: ::
...