And there’s the “gotcha” the OP claimed he wasn’t looking for. :rolleyes:
Since they can both reach/use the steering wheel I’m not sure the illegal turn thing is as clearcut as the speeding issue, since really only Abby can reach the accelerator. Does Brittany handle the brakes?
As I understand it, Brittany does all the steering, while Abby handles both the accelerator and the brake. Good thing they drive an automatic.
If Blake lacks a fully formed brain, how likely is it that he even has an opinion?
There is a spectrum between “fully formed and fully functional” and “drooling vegetable”. Blake could have some sort of mental impairment and still be conscious and have opinions.
But if that’s the case, wouldn’t he have the same rights as anyone else? We don’t kill the severely mentally impaired.
That’s how it should work, yes…
Your hypothetical doesn’t say why Jake wants to be separated.
If it is just because Blake tells boring jokes, and Jake doesn’t want to hear them anymore, then I would find for Blake.
If they agree that the two of them won’t work together, and each would rather die than stay together, I’d say let them flip a coin or otherwise work out who gets to live. If that happened and now Blake is backing down, I wouldn’t enforce that agreement, but Blake would be a bit of a dick to do so.
If Blake’s heart doesn’t work, and Jake’s heart has to work harder to make up for it, , decreasing the quality and length of his life, or if Blake has no legs, so has to be carried, or even is just a head dangling from Jake’s shoulder, then that changes things a bit. They are not partners that have to work together, Blake is a parasite that is causing severe and continuing harm to Jake, and should be removed if that is Jake’s wish, and the only ethical question would be why the hell someone didn’t do this long ago before Blake had enough awareness to fear death.
This may not fly.
Aside from the example **Riemann **gives who lives and who dies in twin separation surgery is dictated by anatomy, not human decision. Even where death does not result, which twin gets which bits is typically determined by which twin has better plumbing for the organ(s).
The first charge against him is not relevant, and as for the second, I was not talking about a judge deciding the fate of another based on coin flip,but two people who mutually agreed to abide by the results of a coin flip.
I also specifically said that I would not consider such an agreement to be legally biding and enforceable if one were to back out.
I was creating a hypothetical to examine the morality of the issue, not the medical consequences. It is true, however, that most (all?) of the time, that “coin flip” was already made by nature before they ever have a chance to.
The doctor announced that the operation was a success but the patient died.
Probably archived here somewhere: About this Collection | C. Everett Koop - Profiles in Science
Ladan and Laleh Bijani were adult conjoined twins that wanted to be separated. Not an example of one twin wanting to be separated and the other not; however, it is an example of adult conjoined twins wanting to be separated despite the risk to their lives. And, indeed, they died from the separation surgery.