Posted on 05/20/2007 11:07:34 PM PDT by monomaniac
VERNON, British Columbia, May 18, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Canadian physician and writer, Dr. Ken Walker, has upset a BC family after he wrote in a column that their two conjoined baby girls ought to have been aborted to avoid being seen as “freaks of nature.”
Walker, a syndicated columnist under the pen name Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, called the twins’ mother, Felicia Simms, “irrational” and suggested she should have had an abortion.
Walker wrote, “Physically they are destined for ill health, lying on their backs forever. They will become obese and develop the myriad of diseases that accompany this problem. Their lives will be a living hell.”
Louise McKay, the twins' grandmother, responded with outrage at the comments.
“We figured that doctors take oaths to preserve lives,” she told CanWest News. “He obviously hasn't been keeping track of their progress. They've been sitting up, eating and playing like any seven-month-old child does.”
The girls, Tatiana and Kristina Hogan, were born last year joined at the head but are healthy and developing normally, eating solid food and playing. The twins are joined at the top of the skull and have fused brain stems, a condition that accounts for only 2 per cent of conjoined twins. No decision has yet been made as to whether they could be surgically separated.
Anybody get GOD`S opinion?
If mercy killing is the issue, in truth it makes little difference if they were born or not. If you wouldn’t kill them after being born I don’t know why you would before - from a mercy point of view.
No human life, no matter the physical disability, is disposable.
It’s a very tough call in many cases, because small details in anatomy can make a huge difference, and it’s often not possible to discover all the important details before birth, or at least very advanced stages of the pregnancy. This case sounds like it will probably turn out poorly, as I can’t imagine that there’s any possibility of separating twins with fused brain stems (apart from simply choosing to sacrifice one of them, and even then it would be iffy). I’m sure they’re adorable as babies, but they’re not going to stay babies, and life may be very miserable for them and their caretakers.
You probably recall the case a few years back of adult female Iranian twins who were joined at the head. On paper, they were doing great. They’d finished college, and one had finished law school (necessarily with the other tagging along), and apparently were healthy enough that they could expect a normal lifespan. Only problem was that they were so miserable that they preferred to take the huge risk of death that came with separation surgery, over continuing to live that way. And sadly, they both died almost immediately after the surgery.
On the other hand, you look at Abigail and Brittany Hensel, and they’re doing great at age 17, and reportedly have no interest in being separated. They’re quite unusual physically, in that while they’re basically two torsos and heads on one pelvis and set of legs, they have a two fully developed hearts so they’re healthy and have plenty of energy. This, and the fact that the nature of their anatomy makes it possible for them to get around easily, seems to make the situation very manageable.
In the end, I think these decisions must be left to the parents, after the medical professionals have provided them as much information as possible. It is really crude of this doctor to publicly write specifically about these twins. He could get any important points across by writing in the abstract about specific factors that occur in various cases of conjoined twins, and what the effects of those factors are on quality of life, and which ones he feels result in such severe impairment that it would better not to let them be born. Naming these twins and saying “their parents should have aborted them” accomplished nothing but to upset the family, and eventually the twins themselves if they’re not too mentally impaired to grow up and surf the Internet.
Ditto that.
The family may soon be faced with an even tougher decision than the decision to abort would have been. As is the case with many conjoined twins, their circulatory systems and hearts aren’t working well enough to support both of them. This usually gets worse rather than better as they grow. At some point, the decision is often whether to hurry up and kill one, to have any chance of saving the other, or to sit by and watch both die, knowing that one very likely could have been saved.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=10929eb1-742c-43a3-9571-8b10f0960e1d&k=14563
This is liberal compassion? Death?
Eugenics ping.
There’s no increased incidence of conjoined twins that I’ve heard, and definitely not any association with fertility drugs or IVF. I keep very up to date on that field, and would certainly have heard if there had been even a single case.
1.) Denial or refusal of the meaning of the original Hippocratic Oath.
2.) A prideful (sorry for the archaic term, but that is what it is) response to the fact that sometimes humans are not in control - rather than deal with the uncertainty, this guy "gets rid" of the problem.
These twins have fused brain stems, it hard to imagine how they could successfully separate these twins, even if they should sacrifice one to save the other.
I don’t believe we should decide which lives are worth living. God has a purpose for each life that he creates. Their life situation may not be ideal, but they should not be killed because of it.
That’s simply heartbreaking!
As unfortunate as these births are,it is not our place to play God, and pick and choose.
I saw that. They were separated and one of them died.
Ifit were my pregnancy, I would abort in this case. 'Playing God' from time to time, being forced to make tough ethical decisions, is what separates technological man from primitive man.
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