Conjoined Twins

Paper Summary:

Examines ethical and legal dilemmas of separation of conjoined twins. Paper focuses on the 2000 court case in Great Britain in which the parents refused to have the twins separated. Issue of applying legal principles to life-and-death decisions. Ethical problem of who has the right to decide whether a patient lives.

From the Paper:

"CONJOINED TWINS: THE ETHICAL DILEMMA

In the Old Testament there is the story of Solomon, judging two women, both of whom claimed a baby was hers. When Solomon offered to cut the baby in two and give each mother half, one woman cried No. Let her have the baby! Thus, Solomon knew that the real mother was willing to give up her child, in order that it could live. We now move forward to the year 2000, when, in Britain, it was up to a judge to decide a far more serious case: unless conjoined twins are separated, they surely both will die; if they are separated one will die but the other will have a chance to survive. The case proceeded to court when the parents refused to have doctors separate the twins, in order to save one, saying that it was the will of God, not modern medicine, to decide."

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