<p>A few years ago I read the story (and saw pictures) of a situation in, I think, Australia.</p>
<p>In this case, the twins didn’t finish splitting. They had two legs, one torso and three arms (not sure about the arms; it may have been two), and two heads. </p>
<p>These girls insisted that they did NOT have two heads - that they were two different people, with different likes and dislikes, etc. They actually seemed quite well adjusted.</p>
<p>This current article kept referring to a “second head” rather than a second girl. I guess they had to dehumanize the second child to make the whole thing more palatable…if that’s possible.</p>
<p>It’s heartbreaking, and I don’t fault the parents at all, but I keep thinking of those two girls with one body in Australia…</p>
<p>nedad, if you feel the urge and can handle it, take a look at the photo of the girl and her parasitic twin before the surgery. (<a href=“http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6998205/[/url]”>http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6998205/</a>) I think you’ll immediately note that the second head had nothing that would show it to be able to sustain life: it was not a child except for a head (no lungs, so it couldn’t have breathed; no throat or digestive tract, so it couldn’t have eaten, etc.). This isn’t the same as the situation you’re relating.</p>
<p>I would completely agree, mootmom, that it is a different situation. In the Australia case the girls weren’t parasitic; they were interdependent. But still, if “the head” had its own fully developed brain, I would prefer to call it a girl and not a head. That said, I think I would have done just what the mother did. I would have opted for the operation, kissed that sweet baby face good-bye, and sent it into eternity (I am not a fundamentalist by any means, but I am religious, and believe I would be sending it back to the loving arms of God).</p>
<p>I’m not sure what NSM means by “autonomic nervous system only”, but to me that means anencephalic, and as Jym626 stated, it is rare for one of these children to live longer than a few days, even with medical intervention - most times the doctors are successful in convincing the parents to allow comfort measures only, giving them a chance to hold and grieve for the child. Having spent some time in the NICU, I can imagine the anguish that parents would go through trying to make this decision, and it is hard to say what you would do in that situation, for one thing every child with this rare condition is unique. Just based on the pictures, I doubt the 2nd head would have a normally formed brain - I think I would give the intact child a chance for a normal life, but we really don’t have enough to info to be anything other than sad and horrified.</p>
<p>The decision they made was a good one. Any other decision would have caused more suffering than it would have alleviated. Ethics does not trump reality.</p>
<p>yikes! poor kid(s)! poor parents!
As horrible as the surgery might seem, it seems like the only choice that would lead to less suffering by all.</p>
<p>I, as a parent, would want to maximize the chances for one or both of the children. If one child was using the life-resources of the other child, and the other child was at risk, I would elect to remove the risk. </p>
<p>However, this article doesn’t support that there was a problem with the head (I hate to call the second child 'the head"…but am not sure how else to distinguish for this conversation). </p>
<p>If both were thriving, I would seek to support both lives…I guess. I can’t really place myself in the shoes of these parents. </p>
<p>I just polled my H …who didn’t hesitate to say that the right thing was done.</p>
<p>Here’s an article describing different responses to the management of anencephalic babies, from a course on bioethics. One family continued the pregnancy in hopes that the organs could be donated, only to be blocked by the Fla. supreme court, and when the baby died at 10 days, the organs were not viable. The other case involves a family who did everything to keep their anencephalic baby alive at a nursing home. This was one of the rare cases where the child survived until age 2 1/2. <a href=“http://www3.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/hsbioethics/units/unit1_3.html[/url]”>http://www3.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/hsbioethics/units/unit1_3.html</a> </p>
<p>These are all very difficult decisions. My heart goes out to those who are faced with them.</p>
<p>not going to debate much about this, but here are some interesting related links:</p>
<p>this was the first well-documented case of a child with two heads; she was Rebeca Martinez from the Dominican Republic and died during surgery to remove the second head (was too young to withstand the surgery - I think this Egyptian child has a better chance of a successful surgery because her parents waited until she reached 10 months). It happened around the same time last year. </p>