"Do we murder Mary to save Jodie?" An ethical analysis of the separation of the Manchester conjoined twins.
نویسندگان
چکیده
“Everyone has the right to life so why should we kill one of our daughters to enable the other to survive?”* That question by the parents of conjoined twins, Mary and Jodie, who were so fused that any attempt to separate them would inevitably result in the death of Mary, stands as a challenge not only to their caregivers at St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester, England, but to all who confronted the vexing issues raised by their plight.
منابع مشابه
One into two will not go: conceptualising conjoined twins.
This paper is written in response to controversial judicial decisions following separation surgery on conjoined twins "Jodie" and "Mary". The courts, it is argued, seem to have conceptualised the twins as "entangled singletons" requiring medical intervention to render them physically separate and thus "as they were meant to be", notwithstanding the death of the weaker twin, "Mary". In contrast,...
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The much-publicised recent decision of the Court of Appeal in the case of the ischiopagus conjoined twins, Mary and Jodie, should be viewed with considerable alarm by criminal lawyers. We find the mood of the Court reminiscent of that in Airedale NHS Trust v. Bland1. There, too, the criminal law appeared to present an inconvenient obstacle to the result desired by all the courts involved. In th...
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Conjoined twins are derived from the division of a single fertilized ovum; a phenomenon accompanied with multiple congenital anomalies. Such twins are identical, of the same sex, and more likely to be female. Most twins die during the embryonic period, and only 18% survive longer than 24 hours. There are complex anomalies in thoraco-omphalopagus twins that makes them unlikely to live long enoug...
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عنوان ژورنال:
- Postgraduate medical journal
دوره 77 911 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2001