Abstract |
The article questions the assumption that conjoined twins are necessarily two people or persons by employing arguments based on different points of view: non-personal vitalism, the person as a sentient being, the person as an agent, the person as a locus of narrative and valuation, and the person as an embodied mind. Analogies employed from the cases of amputation, multiple personality disorder, abortion, split-brain patients and cloning. The article further questions the assumption that a conjoined twin's natural interest and wish is separation. I first contend that separation is such a radical procedure as to render the post-separation person different from the pre-separation one. Therefore, it is not possible to benefit the pre-separation twin by the act of separation. The article concludes with a critical evaluation of the tendency in bioethics to regard ethical challenges as rivalry between individuals competing for scarce resources.
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Authors | Y Michael Barilan |
Journal | The Journal of medicine and philosophy
(J Med Philos)
Vol. 28
Issue 1
Pg. 27-44
(Feb 2003)
ISSN: 0360-5310 [Print] United States |
PMID | 12715280
(Publication Type: Case Reports, Journal Article)
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Topics |
- Abortion, Induced
(ethics)
- Brain
(abnormalities, surgery)
- Cloning, Organism
(ethics)
- Consciousness
- Dissociative Identity Disorder
- Ethics, Medical
- Female
- Humans
- Infant
- Israel
- Malta
(ethnology)
- Personhood
- Philosophy, Medical
- Twins, Conjoined
(psychology, surgery)
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