Second term of college (Rima)...
I've taken Ethics... initially i thought it'd be a total waste of time...
matlab! why in the world would i want to study something that has been instilled in me - in an ongoing process - throughout my life?
infact, that was my first question in the class...
the teach's ans. was pretty disappointing:
" coz that's how the American curriculum is..."
i'd say the Americans have pretty low confidence in their family structure that they'd need a SCHOOL to teach their kids how to be polite...
par since then,
it has become one of ma fav subs... coz all we do is discuss issues and case studies... at times pretty heated ... since the class comprises of a melting pot of cultures, you get a lot of feedback... (the 'melting pot' part seems a bit 'verbose' nahi ?)
one of the discussions we had, that really got to me was about a pair of conjoined twins...
btw... the teach handed out some case studies of which the twin was one...
wait... i'll type the excerpt from the handout itself
here goes:
1.3. Second Example: Jodie and Mary
In August 2000, a young woman from Gozo, an island near Malta, discovered that she was carrying conjoined twins. Knowing that health-care on Gozo were inadequate to deal with the complications of such a birth, she and her husband came to St. Mary's Hospital in Manchester, England to have the babies delivered. The infants, known as Mary and Jodie, were joined at the lower abdomen. Their spines were fused, and they had one heart and one set of lungs between them. Jodie, the stronger, was providing blood for her sister.
No one knows how many sets of conjoined twins are born each year. They are rare, although the recent birth of three sets in Oregon led to speculation that the number is on the rise. ( " The United States has very good hearlth care and very poor record keeping," commented one doctor.) The causes of the phenomenon are largely unknown, but we do know that conjoined twins are a variant of identical twins. When the cell cluster ( the 'pre-embryo') splits three to eight days after fertilisation, identical twins are created; when the split is delayed a few days longer, the division may be incomplete and the twins may be conjoined.
Some sets of conjoined twins do well .They grow to adulthood and sometimes marry and have children themselves. But the lookout for Mary and Jodie was grim. The doctors said that, without intervention, they would die within six months. The only hope was an operation to separate them. This would save Jodie, but Mary would die immediately.
The parents, who are devout Catholics, refused permission for the operation on the grounds that it would hasten Mary's death. " We believe taht nature should take its course, " said the parents. " If it's God's will that both our children should not survive then so be it." The hospital, believing it was obliged to do what it could to save at least one of the infants, asked the courts for permission to separate them despite the parents' wishes. The courts granted permissiosn, and on November 6 the operation was performed. As expected, Jodie lived and Mary died.
In thinking about this case, we should separate the question of who should make the decision from the question of what the decision should be. You might think, for example, that the decision should be left to the parents, in which case you will object to the court's intrusion. But there remains the separete question of what would be the wisest choice for the parents (or anyone else ) to make. We will focus on the latter question: Would it be right or wrong, in these circumstances, to separete the twins?
The Argument That We Should Save as Many as We Can. The obvious argument for separating the twins is that we have a choice between saving one infant or letting both die. Isn't it plainly better to save one? This argument is so appealing that many people will conclude, without further ado that this settles the matter. At the height of the controversy over this case, when the newspapers were full of stories about Jodie and Mary, the Ladies Home Journal commissioned a poll to discover what Americans thought.The poll showed that 78% approved of the operation. People were obviously persuaded by the idea that we should save as many as we can. Jodie and Mary's parents, however, believed there is an even stronger argument on the other side.
The Argument From the Sanctity of Human Life. The parents loved both their children, and they thougt it would be wrong to sacrifice one of them even to save the other. Of course, they were not alone in taking this view. The idea that all human life is precious, regardless of age, race, social class, or handicap, is at the the core of the Western moral tradition. It is especially emphasized in religious writings. In traditional ethics, the prohibition upon killing innocent humans is said to be absolute. It does not matter if the killing would serve a very good purpose; it simply cannot be done. Mary is an innocent human being, and so she may not be killed.
Is this a sound argument? The judges who heard the case in court did not think so, for a surprising reason. They denied that the traditional principle applied in this case. Lord Justice Robert Walker said that, in performing the operation, Mary would not be killed. She would merely be separeated from her sister, and then " She would die, not becase she was intentionally killed , but because her own body cannot sustain her life." In other words, the cause of ther death would not be the operation but her own weakness. The physicians also seem to have taken this view. When the operation finally was performed, they went through the motions of trying to keep Mary alive --" giving her every chance" -- even though they knew it was futile.
The judge's point may seem a bit sophistical. Surely, you might think, it doesnt matter whther we say that Mary's death is caused by the operation or by her own body's weakness. Either way, she will be dead, and her death will have come sooner than if she had not been separated from her sister.
There is, however, a more natural objection to the Argument form the Sanctity of Life, that does not rely on such a strained point. One might reply that it is not always wrong to kill innocent human beings. In rare situations, it may be right. In particular , if a) the innocent human is going to die soon no matter what; b) the innocent human has no wish to go on living, perhaps because she is so mentally undeveloped as to have no wishes at all; and c) killing the innocent human will save the life of others, who can then go on to have good full lives -- in these rare circumstances, the killing of the innocent might be justified. Of couse, many moraliste, especially religious thinkers, will not be convinced. Nevertheless, this is a line of thought that many people may find persuasive.
OK... well...
i have a jumble of ideas bounding around in my head...
first off... i dont really have a specific stand on the issue of WHAT THE DECISION should be
infact, for most of the class, i was ranting on about how the court had NO right to decide for the parents...
i mean...
1. the parents are the one who would have to live with the consequence of the decision... the court will simply forget about it after a couple of months
2. those twins belong to the parents ... up until a certain age... parents act as guardian for their kids which = the parents make the decisions for the kids ... where the hell does the court come into this picture
3. the way I see it, the court is contradicting its own function... its actually wresting away the parents right as guardians...
4. also, i thought that the judiciary exists in order to mediate between two rivalling parties... whr are the two rivalling parties in this case? if u think that its parents vs hospital... then i totally disagree, i mean if the hospital really has the right, morally or legally to decide who is to have an operation n who not... docs wont keep asking patients before hand... ( im not sure bout this one but i think there is some paperwork involved where the patient or whoever is acting for the patient CONFIRMS the patients willingness to undergo the treatment... hmm... shud prolly check on this .. shrug )
AMAZINGLY, most of the rest of the class... ( by this i basically mean everybody else who participates in the discussinon... about half remain mum...)
thinks that the court has every right to intervene...
matlab!!! would you let the neighbour come in, run all over you , n tell you how to run ur house... ok... a pathetic example, i hate giving examples anyway
par it does give u an idea of what im trying to say right ?
one of the girls was pretty adamant...
she said if she'd been the parent, she'd DEFINITELY get them separated... her emphasis infact was on the fact that all conjoined twins should be immediately separated no matter the consequence... she obviously had the notion that nobody, NOBODY could live a normal healthy life stuck to a twin... (back to this later @ ****)
but then i found that irrelevant... what mattered to me was not whether it was important to separate the twins... it was more of protecting Mary's individuality...( since Jodie's was not under any threat...) n also my disagreement with the amount of authority given to the court of course...
another thing which almost made me cry was the way EVERYBODY seemed to agree that it was ok that the parents let go of Mary if Jodie had - as a consequence - a chance to survive...
matlab!!! hello !!!
thik hai Mary is weak... par i thought it was in the core of humane ideology that everybody be treated equally both the weak and the strong...
to tell u the truth , i can also understand the 'survival of the fittest' concept... par the way everybody jus brushed off Mary's existence was ......
HURTFUL...
no seriously, it was...
when you come right down to it, i don't really beleve that there is a course of action that is THE RIGHT thing to do...
it really all depends on the person who has the authority to decide ... in this case - i beleve- the parents... which is why i got all mad wid the court
(cont ****)
oh... n interesting thing i picked up
one of the girls... Karishma apparently knew or knew of a pair of conjoined twins... grown up and not separated...
apparently, they were UNWILLIng to separate as they had been together their entire life... not very hard to understand ( at least for me )
food for thought:
the court interfered...
it got what it wanted...
i beleve in fate...
if the court was SUPPOSED to interfere and get what it wanted ...
WHY the hell am i so upset about it...
but then... if Jodie was meant to survive ... maybe she would have without the court's help... n likewise Mary's death...
LOL...
im reading this again...
im so silly !!!
its like the 'did the egg or chicken come first?' wala problem...
some comments on text:
We will focus on the latter question: Would it be right or wrong, in these circumstances, to separate the twins?
Of course this is just my perspective, but should we not focus on WHO decides rather than what the decision is? I mean, there IS no clear-cut answer to WHAT the decision should be. Under similar circumstances, the parents are always more likely to let fate decide and onlookers to want to save one of the child. In fact, the way I see it, the WHAT decision depends entirely upon WHO decides.
The idea that all human life is precious, regardless of age, race, social class or handicap is at the core of Western moral tradition.
Excuse me? I resent the singling out of 'Western' moral tradition. The rest of the human race isn't exaclty a bunch of cutthroats you know.
Lord Justice Robert Walker said that, in performing the operation, Mary would not be killed. She would merely be separated from her sister, and then, " She would die not because she was intentionally killed, but because her own body cannot sustain her." In other words the cause of her death will not be the operation but her own weakness.
lol.
hmmm... lemme try a hand at 'word manipulation' myself...
death according to Merriam-Webster dictionary : a permanent cessation of all vital functions
and since most vital functions are irrevocbly interconnected, a damage/ cessation of one may adversely or even fatally affect all others.
The separation (operation) was the direct cause of damage/ cessation to some of these vital functions...
how then can you not say that a doctor fully aware of the consequences of the operation could not POSSIBLY be 'intentionally killing' Mary?
sophistical
meaning of sophistical:
1 : of or relating to sophists , sophistry, or the ancient Sophists 2 : plausible but fallacious - so·phis·ti·cal·ly
One might reply that it is not always wrong to kill innocent humans beings. In rare situations, it may be right. In particular if a) the innocent human is going to die soon no matter what b) the innocent human has no wish to go on living, perhaps because she is so mentally undeveloped as to have no wishes at all c) killing innocent human can save the life of others, who can then go on to have good full lives
a) how do you decide when 'soon ' is ... and anyway, who ARE we do decide that ...
b) in my religion, it is absolutely forbidden to take one's own life or anybody elses and i fully agree... doing so will be an expression of utter ingratitude...and anyway, taking the easy way out is never the solution... also the suffering may to a great degree atone our sins ( i know, this is a lot of religious drivel... its mostly for my own record... i dont expect to convince anybody by it)
c) this is the silliest reason i have ever heard of... killing ANYBODY is bound to benefit SOMEBODY ... and how a person can live a 'good full life' knowing that he was the cause of death of another/others is beyond my understanding.
