I stumbled across this story on yahoo, and I’m a little freaked.
This is the only reason why it’s complicated?!? As I read the story, I couldn’t help but wonder exactly what the nature of this kid’s “second head” is. I realize, of course, that answers to this question on this board are going to be wild and varied in light of all the abortion threads we’ve had here. One extreme view might be that the second head is, in fact, an independent person from the infant Rebecca–it just so happens that it only amounts to a head, and that the rest of it never developed. The other would be that this is what the story apparently purports it to be: an undeveloped child that might be called stillborn at best, apparently feeding off its sister’s vital systems, but otherwise not a person.
I’m leaning towards the latter, except that the following part gave me pause:
So…whoa. Suddenly I’m not so willing to dismiss the second head as some kind of organic, human-like blob. By no means would I conclusively define it as an individual person (for the record, I’m in the Pro-Life, life-begins-at-conception) crowd…but if I were one of the parents or physicians invovled, I’d definitely want to know what I was looking at before I took any surgical action.
I’m curious on everyone’s perspectives on this (and by the way…out of the 40,000+ members of the SDMB, is anyone out there a conjoined twin?)…where do Rebecca and her other head lie in the debate over personhood? Assuming that Rebecca weren’t in any kind of danger, does her twin merit a discussion over individuality? Exactly how far does a conjoined twin have to be developed before it’s considered a separate-but-attached individual?
I’d say that thinking about this topic makes my head hurt, but that’s a little too close to a pun…
Good lord. I just asked my boyfriend this question after pondering this news story for most of the day. I figured I’d check the boards and see if anyone had struck up a discussion yet. Man, you guys are fast.
I’m definitely part of the pro-choice camp, so I understand that my take on the situation probably doesn’t hold much weight for you. I think that Rebecca has a greater chance of thriving in our society without a second head. I think that a second head left stranded on top of another body has a pretty crappy shot at life in general. They haven’t really given us an idea of the extent of the 2nd head’s brainwaves, but certainly as they got older, it wouldn’t be much of a life being a second head stuck upside down on your evil, controlling sister, now would it?
I think that either way, this has to be a heart wrenching decision for her parents to make, but I honestly believe they’re doing what they can to give her the best shot at life that she has.
While that may sound callous, I do understand that this is a horrific situation for both the child and the parents. However, I do believe they are making the best decision they can at this point.
There is a set of conjoined twins that at first glance looks like one girl with two heads. They are most definitely two little girls with connected bodies. They were featured on a documentary on conjoined twins. Cutting off the second head in that case would be murder, probably of both girls; each controlled half the body. This case is different, but it is unclear how different. I wonder what some brain activity means.
Imagine growing up knowing that you were born like that. Imagine wondering about this question all your life. Wondering what would have happened if the operation hadn’t been done.
I’d like to put myself in the ‘completely wigged out’ category on this one.
Wow, what a crazy occurance. But I must say that I agree with malkavia on this. To leave the head in place wouldn’t be very kind to either of the “personalities” assuming that there are two personalities there. Hypothetically, IF there were no risk to Rebecca and if the second head was conscious I would still think that surgery would be the way to go. Sheesh, if I had an upside down head on top of my head, I would certianly find a very attractive hat.
…and you thought the upside-down headed son of the reporter on Family Guy was a ridiculus idea…
The second head would become a person at the same kind of point and by the same kind of processes as would a normal baby with a single head; the only difference is that the cases of a babies with single head that we might otherwise have had to place in the grey area of ‘not quite a person’ probably simply wouldn’t survive to trouble us with the question.
Well, I suppose I qualify to answer that; I happen to believe that a soul (Assuming for the sake of argument that such a thing really exists independent of the material) probably isn’t a boolean property that you either have or don’t have, but rather something that grows and develops, along with the body and mind, so if the second head started to develop mental processes and some kind of inner life, I’d say that it would also be developing a soul.
I wouldn’t necessarily see this as an insurmountable obstacle to the surgical removal of the second head though.
And of course, this is just my personal, worthless opinion; not (AFAIK) the mainstream doctrine of any particular religious body.
An unborn fetus is also a parasite. What about unseperated conjoined twins where one has the dominant use of the limbs? Would you still consider someone joined at the hip without the use of the legs and minimal use of arms a parasite? If the brain were more developed it would be even more difficult to decide. Given that the second brain is not going to fully develop and
If something “grows and develops”, then you have it. The form changes with time, not the status of its existence. Don’t Christians, in general, believe (I might be mistaken) that a property of human life is “ensoulment” and that as such, life begins at conception?
What do you mean by mental processes and inner life? Consciousness and a sense of self?
Furthermore, if there are neuronal networks in the head of an infant (and there are), doesn’t their activity comprise mental processes? If no, is the belief in the lack of mental processes in an infant, based upon the lack of coherent memories as an adult, of such activity as an infant? Or, does mental processes refer to similar activity as an older human?
Since I was a child I have heard that two heads are better than one. So what happens when Two heads is finally found? “Off with his head” they yell. My vote is to buy two hats and send him (hims?) off to compete on Jeopardy instead.
From what I read, they fear that the pressure on the fully formed twins brain would be damaging. In that case, I would want to remove the other. Poor children, and poor parents.
I’m pretty sure the “life begins at conception” notion stems from the fact that a developing fetus has all the scientific properties of a life at the moment of conception. (Thinking back to 8th grade biology, I seem to remember eight distinct properties of life: they included things like respiration, consumption, cell division, and a bunch of others I can’t remember. I do remember that viruses were lacking some of these and technically didn’t constitute life.)
The ensoulment principle is another matter–the soul isn’t something that can be scientifically determined (unless you’re a fan of the Kirilian aura), so how do we know if and when somebody has one? Speaking for the Catholics, I don’t believe my church has ever made a definitive declaration on the matter. Even Pope Paul VI’s controversial document Humanae Vitae said something to the effect that “the developing infant must be treated as a person from the moment of conception” (emphasis mine), suggesting that we don’t know when a fetus gets its soul–so better to play it safe.
This does lead to all kinds of oddball questions–for example, are both souls present in the embryo that becomes identical twins before twinning occurs? Is one child techically the parent of the other? Yeesh.
I saw that documentary, the girls are Abby and Brittty Hensel and live in Minnesota. After your forst shock at seeing them, it is plain that they are each individuals with unique personnalities living a very active normal life!
THis second head, though that is an entirely different matter. I read when Rebeca (the baby) nurses the mouth moves on the parasitic head too. Thank goodness the baby wasn’t killed outright by suspicious villagers or something.
But the beard is a subjective observation at the fringes. Are you claiming that some adults do not possess a soul or can “trim it down” a la beard? What is a soul?
How absurd to extend the analogy in that direction!
I’m not actually claiming anything at all; it just happens to be my opinion that, as I said, a soul isn’t perhaps a boolean property, but rather something that grows and develops as a contiuous process, along with the other attributes of the individual - an emergent phenomenon, if you like, in such a way as that there is no precise point in time where you could say “Aha! here is a soul where moments ago there was none”.