Criminal law implications for doctors who perform sacrificial separation surgery on conjoined twins in England and Australia
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The spectre of court-sanctioned sacrificial separation of teenage conjoined twins against their will.
In a recent decision of the Indian Supreme Court, judges foreshadowed authorising separation of teenage conjoined twins where both would die if not separated but where the operation could save only one. The absence of medical information advising separation precluded such a decision in the case at hand. However, the case raises a number of difficult legal and ethical questions that judges would...
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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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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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In 2000, conjoined twins were born in England. What made this case unique was the fact that if the twins remained unseparated, medical opinion held they would die; if they were separated one twin would live, and one twin would die; the parents refused to consent to separation; and the hospital charged with their care brought the matter to court. The trial court and court of appeal approved of t...
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a coroner recorded a special verdict for the death of a baby girl in England. 1 The coroner faced an unusual situation-a death from surgery when it was known beforehand the patient was going to die. 2 The coroner admitted that all surgeries carry a risk of mortality, but in this case the mortality rate from the surgery was known beforehand to be one hundred percent. 3 The special verdict read: ...
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