[quote]Magarhe wrote:
Hensel twins
http://members.tripod.com/~midnightwill/twins.html
What do you do … don’t know, it certainly is weird. But not for the twins, it is the only life they know.
[/quote]
I’d hit it! er, them! I mean, in 10 years…
Sorry.
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
Yea, That may have come off as a little cold and opportunistic. What I meant was that it would be interesting to see how a person or people would develope under such a rare circumstance.[/quote]
Yeah, but not so interesting from their perspective.
I believe the dilemma comes down to whether you want to try to have as normal a life as possible for the body and one head; or whether you try to keep both heads alive, no matter their life quality.
Quantity vs. quality.
If both heads are viable, it would be two persons. There are two complete brains.
If there was a way to cut one of the heads off and somehow make the remaining head fit properly (what I mean is no diformity) and just have one whole baby/person, I would do it. The decision would haunt me, but I still feel it better than leaving my child like that…
[quote]etaco wrote:
In many cases of severe birth defects it seems that nature would be more merciful than man, cleaning up its mistakes rather than selfishly keeping the kid alive through advanced medical intervention so it can suffer through a short and miserable life.[/quote]
I agree completely.
This thread is not what I needed with a wife 37 weeks along…
flcroc,
I am going to go out on a limb and presume that you had a test/scan they do in the 6th month for any abnormalities. Its where they measure the major bones and check on the 4 sections of the heart?
I have a son ( yes my wife found out in the ultra sound) due in dec and we have done all major checks. I am sure that you have nothing to worry about. Good luck and I wish you the best with your family.
As for being on subject. I would have aborted knowing that kind of life “they” would be destined to live here.
[quote]hankr wrote:
Magarhe wrote:
Hensel twins
http://members.tripod.com/~midnightwill/twins.html
What do you do … don’t know, it certainly is weird. But not for the twins, it is the only life they know.
I’d hit it! er, them! I mean, in 10 years…
Sorry.
[/quote]
You seem to be the only person who read the links I sent about the sixteen year old girls who are two heads and one body. They did a documentary years back and are about to do another.
They are TWO DIFFERENT GIRLS but share the same body … one has control of one arm, and the other has control of the other arm. Legs etc… are joint controlled. The odds of a baby coming out so fully functional like this are even lower than it happening in the first place.
If one holds her breath, the other can still breath, I believe.
It is NOT like having double the brainpower, it is like having someone next to you 100% of the time. But they do have some weird telepathy type communication I believe, although whether that is because they are always together and know each other so well, who knows.
To the original question it is hard to say unless you have made that choice, it is still YOUR child. If you were married and your wife was in a terrible accident of some kind would you leave her? Prob. not because you know her. You don’t know a newborn baby but there is attachment to a person who is half you and half your wife. It is easier to be harsh when thinking of OTHER people’s deformed children.
In ancient Sparta they threw any child that was UGLY, let alone deformed, off a cliff - and it wasn’t the parents who decided, but the elders. Now THAT is harsh.
Personally I’d like to throw ugly adults off a cliff, or at least fat ones (haha just kidding).
[quote]Kailash wrote:
Res Judicata wrote:
Kailash wrote:
Professor X wrote:
What makes a whole person?
Self-awareness, certainly. Though, for a newborn, regular activity of the cerbral cortex would suffice. (They aren’t quite yet able to express self-awareness, so some clinical test is necessary.)
If you think about it a little more deeply, you’ll find that this is a very poor definition of what makes a person. Peter Singer uses a similar definition, I believe. He would allow infanticide in a surprizing number of cases. He’s a monster.
Infants are far less self-aware than, say, a dog, fyi.
You’ll find that there’s no significant reasoned difference between a child immediately before or after birth, or even for sometime thereafter. Check out the Philip K. Dick story “The Pre-Person’s” sometime for a bit of reducto ad absurdam along these lines. The Pre-Persons - Everything2.com
A person in a coma? Asleep? Senile? Significantly mentally retarded, yet still aware? Differentiate a dog from an infant, a toddler, an adult.
There is something apart from self-awareness that makes us human persons. What you see with an infant is the potential for self-awareness and the potential to grow into an adult human.
There is a very, very dangerous slippery slope related to utilitarian arguments about whether other persons should continue to live.
Here’s a tip: Reading just the first sentence, then writing an entire post answering it - before reading the second sentence - makes you look stupid. Especially when you quoted the second sentence:
“Though, for a newborn, regular activity of the cerbral cortex would suffice. (They aren’t quite yet able to express self-awareness, so some clinical test is necessary.)”
Therefore, we don’t have to wait for the infant to express their personhood. Just check for normal cortical activity.
Some babies are born with anencephaly or severe hydroencephaly, etc. and would live their entire lives as vegetables, basically operating on only a brain stem. They would never attain personhood, and could be euthanized or, typically, allowed to die. Quite simple.[/quote]
Because the second sentence is special pleading. Infants are not merely unable to express self-awareness (as, say, a peron in a coma is). Infacts are, as a I said, less self-aware than a dog. Your definition fails on the facts. Again, what reasoned distinction between a dog and infant human?
Even if it were factual plausible, you have to created a special category of definition to fit infants within your definition of “whole person”. Again, though, how do you distinguish between before birth and after birth? An individual life is an unbroken continuum extending from conception to death. There may be stages in that continuum, but it is one coninuous process.
What you are seeing with reguar brain activity, as I suggested, is the potential to develop into a self-aware human person. Of course, the same applies to any of the earlier stages of human development.
Anencephalic infants are a particularly difficult case, but, frankly, regardless of care they die very quickly. I do not think we should deny them their humanity, however. There are also boundary problems here – where do you draw the line between severely brain damaged an allowed to survive and not?
[quote]kevbo wrote:
Res Judicata wrote:
There is something apart from self-awareness that makes us human persons. What you see with an infant is the potential for self-awareness and the potential to grow into an adult human.
What about a sperm and an egg then? They all have potential. No matter what you are; pro-choice or pro-life, there are exceptions to every definition you give. There are has never been a simple solution to a complex social problem like abortion, so don’t make it seem like there is one.
[/quote]
That’s why it’s one of the conventional, and more effective, arguments against abortion. It’s extraordinarily difficult to draw reasoned distinctions between an infant the moment before birth and after, or 1, 2, 3, 8 months before. The only time a categorical distinction can be made is at conception, or, perhaps, gastrulation.
[quote]Magarhe wrote:
hankr wrote:
Magarhe wrote:
Hensel twins
http://members.tripod.com/~midnightwill/twins.html
What do you do … don’t know, it certainly is weird. But not for the twins, it is the only life they know.
I’d hit it! er, them! I mean, in 10 years…
Sorry.
You seem to be the only person who read the links I sent about the sixteen year old girls who are two heads and one body. They did a documentary years back and are about to do another.
…
[/quote]
Yeah, despite my warped sese of humor, I knew who they were immediately upon seeing the pictures. I actually watched the documentary you are talking about.
It was in equal parts inspiring and heartbreaking. There can be no doubt that the parents are glad that both girls lived, and they are getting as normal an upbringing as they could have, given the circumstances. It was kind of cool to watch them do stuff, with each controlling half of the body. Although they seem to have adapted well, there is still no doubt that the arms, esp belong to two different people.
I just hope my kids are never faced with something like this.
[quote]SirPhisticated wrote:
With todays technology there’s no way a woman can give birth to a child with two heads without knowing it first. In my opinion you’re an egoistic idiot, if you don’t choose an abortion, if you know the child will be severely disabled or retarded.
I may be a cynical asshole but that’s my opinion…
[/quote]
I’d have to agree. Miscarriages happen for a reason. Some mutations improve the race. The rest don’t and are subsequently terminated by the womb itself. If mutates actually survive the womb, something in the mother went wrong to not kill it.
[quote]colonelquack wrote:
SirPhisticated wrote:
With todays technology there’s no way a woman can give birth to a child with two heads without knowing it first. In my opinion you’re an egoistic idiot, if you don’t choose an abortion, if you know the child will be severely disabled or retarded.
I may be a cynical asshole but that’s my opinion…
I’d have to agree. Miscarriages happen for a reason. Some mutations improve the race. The rest don’t and are subsequently terminated by the womb itself. If mutates actually survive the womb, something in the mother went wrong to not kill it.
[/quote]
Maybe the mother didn’t know, maybe in her country you do not get free scans, maybe she could not afford the scans.
[quote]SirPhisticated wrote:
With todays technology there’s no way a woman can give birth to a child with two heads without knowing it first. In my opinion you’re an egoistic idiot, if you don’t choose an abortion, if you know the child will be severely disabled or retarded.
I may be a cynical asshole but that’s my opinion…
[/quote]
Not everyone has access to all of todays technology. Some people may feel that having an abortion would make you an egoistic idiot.
[quote]matt88 wrote:
SirPhisticated wrote:
With todays technology there’s no way a woman can give birth to a child with two heads without knowing it first. In my opinion you’re an egoistic idiot, if you don’t choose an abortion, if you know the child will be severely disabled or retarded.
I may be a cynical asshole but that’s my opinion…
Not everyone has access to all of todays technology. Some people may feel that having an abortion would make you an egoistic idiot.[/quote]
You obviously didn’t read my second post. I looked at this from my point of view, which is western, where the technology and the money is there.
I do realize, that the woman in the article is from Indonesia which is predominantly muslim, and there most likely was no choice in her particular situation.
Feel free to enlighten me though, how sparing a child of the psychological consequences of being born like that is egoistic.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
I am just interested in what some parents on this board would do in this situation. If your child was born with one body and two heads, would you surgically have one head removed?[/quote]
That’s a hard question to answer as the parent of two healthy and beautiful children. It’s kind of like “what would you do in combat?”. You never know until you get there. My belief is that everything happens for a reason. The Lord has the master plan and it is not for us to know. He made that baby like that for a reason. The love of a child is unike the love for anything else. If you have no children, you have no idea what true love and fear is.
Now, if there were other health issues involved like the child would be in tremendous pain or the mother’s life is in grave danger, that would take a great deal of thought and prayer. Some poor kids are born allergic to their own skin and live very painful lives wrapped in bandages and pumped full of pain killers.
I been following this thread without a response because I still don’t know what I would do in this situation. I have five healthy kids of my own and have never had to contemplate these kind of choices. After reading this thread,
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=1213436
I’d like to think I’d raise the children and help them with whatever difficulties they face. That’s easy to say, when all I’m doing is watching an inspirational video.
I’d be curious what the response of the father in that story would say.
[quote]SirPhisticated wrote:
matt88 wrote:
SirPhisticated wrote:
With todays technology there’s no way a woman can give birth to a child with two heads without knowing it first. In my opinion you’re an egoistic idiot, if you don’t choose an abortion, if you know the child will be severely disabled or retarded.
I may be a cynical asshole but that’s my opinion…
Not everyone has access to all of todays technology. Some people may feel that having an abortion would make you an egoistic idiot.
You obviously didn’t read my second post. I looked at this from my point of view, which is western, where the technology and the money is there.
I do realize, that the woman in the article is from Indonesia which is predominantly muslim, and there most likely was no choice in her particular situation.
Feel free to enlighten me though, how sparing a child of the psychological consequences of being born like that is egoistic.[/quote]
SirPhisticated, you are not very sophisicated.
I do not believe you have travelled much either, what does the religion of a country have to do with the availability of medical services?
[quote]electric_eales wrote:
SirPhisticated, you are not very sophisicated.
I do not believe you have travelled much either, what does the religion of a country have to do with the availability of medical services?
[/quote]
It has nothing to do with the medical services but is has A LOT to do with views on abortion.