title: One or two: an examination of the recent case of the conjoined twins from Malta.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine B, Meir Hospital, Kfar Saba, Israel. bentovia@shani.net
authors.forename: Y Michael
authors.initials: YM
authors.lastname: Barilan
mesh_terms: D000028:Abortion, Induced / Q000941:ethics; D001921:Brain / Q000002:abnormalities / Q000601:surgery; D019976:Cloning, Organism / Q000941:ethics; D003243:Consciousness; D009105:Dissociative Identity Disorder; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007557:Israel; D008319:Malta / Q000208:ethnology; D028723:Personhood; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D014428:Twins, Conjoined / Q000523:psychology* / Q000601:surgery