Holby’s conjoined twins dilemma

September 17th, 2008 - 00:22 | 5 comments

Holby City had an interesting moral dilemma this evening¹. Their major storyline of the last couple of months has been conjoined twins, born to an illegal-immigrant North Korean couple claiming asylum on the basis of their persecuted Christianity. Throw in a very Catholic doctor, some very expensive operations, an unfriendly Home Office and a hostile hospital boardroom and you’ve got some interesting plots.

In tonight’s show they discovered a heart problem in one of the twins. She was almost certainly going to die, and was only currently surviving by ‘leeching off’ her twin. But if she dies, both die. So the hospital rushed to arrange the operation to split them, in order to save the single child. The parents refused to permit it, saying it was God’s will that both should die.

Now, I’m happy to dismiss this argument out of hand. It doesn’t matter whether you’re religious, there are multiple ways that makes no sense - God also put the babies into a hospital, surrounded by doctors, for example. But Very Catholic Doctor was conflicted for a different reason: he reacted to a comment about ‘cutting away one child as if it were a growth’, and wasn’t happy with an operation that would, essentially, actively kill one baby.

I personally still don’t find this too tricky. Non-action results in no babies surviving, while action results in one baby surviving. I don’t consider it immoral to ‘kill’ a baby that’s going to die anyway, if it means saving the life of another (providing you do everything you can to minimise suffering). I am also happy to go against the parents’ wishes, as children aren’t the property of their parents.

But I am not a parent, and others with me found it difficult. What do you think?

I have forgiven its moment of madness [↩]

-----

5 Responses to “Holby’s conjoined twins dilemma”

1 Andrew Sep 17th, 2008 at 10:06 am

Isn’t it strange that people with a complete set of God-given rules by which to make decisions and live their lives so frequently seem to have so much harder a time with this kind of thing than those of us who have to take responsibility and work it out for ourselves? It’s almost as if their rules are stupid or something.
2 Paul Burgin Sep 17th, 2008 at 10:49 am

Coming from me you may find this strange, but on this issue I totally agree with your views given the sceneario.
Nasty any way you look at it though!
3 Andrew Sep 18th, 2008 at 12:08 am

@paul - I don’t find that strange at all - I don’t think the show’s religious arguments really held water, and I couldn’t see any reason for most religious people should accept them. I’d be interested in the Catholic perspective, though, as Catholicism has always seemed a bit more concerned with ‘the natural way of things’ than other denominations.

@Andrew - quite In hindsight, it’s curious they didn’t make it any more tortuous for the secular majority. The current dilemma is probably a bit tricky for Catholics, but I can’t see many others struggling with it. But what if, say, there was a 50%, all-or-nothing chance of both children surviving the operation, but a 75% chance of one child surviving without? I’m sure the scriptwriters could come up with something really awful, if they wanted.
4 Jules Oct 1st, 2008 at 12:53 am

As a mother of 4month old boy/girl twins I feel quite strongly about this situation in Holby. Not sure it should be such a big issue for the catholic of which I am one of those too. The way I see it is that I couldn’t bare the thought of being without my babies, or choosing between them. I would however, make sure if faced with an ‘impossible’ situation I would make the choice to save them even if it meant losing one. As sitting by and letting a child die is unacceptable in my opinion and they do not deserve to be parents if not prepared to move heaven and earth for their welfare.
5 Jules Oct 1st, 2008 at 12:56 am

Another thing in my experience as a former practising catholic ( not through choice!), is that the religion is full of guilt and hypocracy which ends up messing with people’s heads and I feel causes bad decision making.

-----

Commenting Policy: Thoughts, observations, argument, debate and all other conversational wonderments are encouraged, but personal attacks or general trolling will result in your comment being deleted and your account/IP banned. If you're nice, however, you get strawberries.