Astonishing & Disturbing

I wrote this on a forum awhile ago, but the vision still sticks with me. So I have been kind of sitting on this one because the fear of possible controversy. However, here goes nothing...

FROM: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6998205/ (WARNING: Has a semi-disturbing picture.)

CAIRO, Egypt - An Egyptian baby born with two heads was in stable condition on Sunday after doctors at a provincial hospital removed one of the heads in a 13-hour operation, the doctors said. Nasif Hifnawy, head of pediatrics at Benha Children’s Hospital, told Reuters that 10-month-old Manar Maged could move all four limbs and showed no signs of paralysis. “Manar is now breathing normally and has a normal heartbeat and blood pressure,” he added. The baby remains in intensive care at the hospital, 25 miles north of Cairo, and doctors expect her to stay there for at least seven days.

That's astonishing. It's disturbing to think about the extra head being capable of blinking and smiling. It'd be like you were removing a separate, living organism, which begs the question: what did they do with the extra head, and how did they dispose of it? How long was the extra head alive before it ceased to live? Was it similar to an abortion?

There are a myriad of ethical questions that arise from a surgery like this, not the least of which being how a mother can make the decision to remove what's left of a twin that would have been her child. The scary thing is, it's not just a malformed fetus without identity. It's a head, with hair, eyebrows, eyes that can presumably see, a moving mouth that can smile and presumably cry, a nose that was presumably linked to the overall nerve network and that could smell, cheeks that became rosy... It'd be too much for me to handle. That extra head wasn't just a bag of flesh that needed to be removed like a tumor. It was the beginnings of a separate life.

Was it morally wrong? I don't think so. The child would have suffered a terrible death because of the complications this extra head would have caused. It would have been a terrible decision to make, though, because even though they made the best decision, the situation was so awful that even the best was still heartbreaking.