erraticwisdom

Comments

1. Theresa:
   I believe that the real problem in situation Is that between two oppinions of good. One would say to save another life is better to waste another life. But in a moral with religion before medical sacrifice the problems will begin. One good seeker wishes to save another person from death by donating organs of the dead, The other to preserve the child for what i am assuming is for some want for religus purpose or just out of goodwill in that persons perception of ethics.
   
   In my view, If i had a child that was in this situation, It would most likely depress me to know that that would happen. But knowing that it would be used to save someone’s loved child i would most likely allow it to procede with a definete yes.

   Spencer

   Sep 10, 09:37 PM #
2. 3 Jodie and Mary.—-I think that most people on this website are too smart to get too caught up in this one. Of course it is better to save one life rather than allow both to slip away. In my eyes, allowing both twins to die is simply the weak path. It is the path that avoids direct responsibility, and it is the path of inaction.

   Craig

   Sep 14, 04:13 PM #
3. Too difficult. Just like the middle east. No solution. (except from number three)
   
   Anyway:
   
   1. Is the person dead or not ? I think the legal status equals the moral in this case. If yes, donation is ok.
   
   2. Euthanasia is not justified in this case. Sentenced to life in prison is another story and sounds far too harsh.
   
   3. This one is the easiest. Save a life.
   
   Good luck with med. school!

   Einar

   Sep 15, 12:38 PM #
4. Einar: That’s the tricky part with number 1. Removing the organs would result in the death of the baby (even though the baby would likely die in a few days anyway).
   
   Craig:
   I agree.
   
   Saving Jodie at the expense of Mary is justified because sustaining Mary would have eventually led to the death of both children. While it may seem wrong to save the life of one person at the cost of another, it is certainly more repulsive to cause the death of two children simply because of not acting at all.

   Thame

   Sep 18, 11:28 AM #
5. Jodie and mary-
   
   View it simply as though mary is a parasite living off of jodie. In that case would not it be justified to remove said parasite from jodie?

   Spencer

   Sep 18, 05:06 PM #
6. Ok, regarding anencephaly:
   
   Death can occur in two ways: The usual one, when the heart stops to beat and in addition there is the brain death definition.
   
   Even when the conservative (and usual) definition of this is used (cessation of electrical activity in the whole brain), I guess there are cases of Anencephaly where the person could be defined as dead. However, in that case the person/individual would never have been able to breathe either. At least home here in Norway, such individuals would never get artificial respiration, and then a question about donating organs would never come up.
   
   Maybe a bit complicated, but the bottom line is: For donation of organs to be morally acceptable the person must be able to give consent, like in kidney transplantations or even bone marrow transplantations or the person must be dead.
   
   I think a very relevant moral question is this:
   
   A couple have one child with a hemoblobinopatia, and this child need a HLA matched bone marrow transplantation to survive more than 40 years or so. Then they decide to get another child, they want pre-implantation diagnosis to verify that the new child is healthy, and to verify HLA compatibility. Post partum they then plan that the new child should donate stem cells to the first child.
   
   Is this ok to
   1. Produce a child destined to become a donor of stem cells?
   2. Select a child (fertilized ovum)based, not only on healthieness, but also on HLA status.
   
   I think this one is tricky.

   Einar

   Sep 19, 11:30 AM #
7. In our western culture, ethics, and decision making in general, favors ‘the greater good.’ This ‘greater good’ creates a problem which is that in order to create something, we must destroy something else. Some examples are:
   
   1. firing a few employees to raise the wages of others
   2. cutting down forests to create homes, businesses, packaging, and paper.
   3. destroying embryos to (potentially) benefit the life of others.
   4. weeding students out of higher academia to further empower the achievers.
   5. killing something, or someone, to stop suffering
   
   For Christ, the focus was always on the neglected, the marginalized, the ‘least of these’, those most likely to be ignored by everyone else. Christ’s ethic was to put the individual ahead of ‘the whole’ (the greater good). This ethic is a radical alternative to mainstream western culture.
   
   Another point of tension is the idea of control vs. the good of others. Specifically in reference to number 3, is the argument to remove Mary only for the purpose of saving Jodie’s life, or does it also stem from our discomfort with the idea of death and our own inability to control it? More generally, is the motive for separating siamese twins their own well being, or does our own (and societies) discomfort with those that are different from us, or the realization that we might have to put more of our own effort into caring for someone else, play a more substantial role than we would admit?

   Scott Lenger

   Sep 28, 07:42 AM #
8. Not exactly medical ethic, but worth a read –
   
   news @ nature.com – Brain electrodes conjure up ghostly visions – Simple stimulation may underpin complex mental illusions. – http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060918/full/060918-4.html
   
   Man rejects first penis transplant (psycho’logical/somatic’ reasons) – http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1874818,00.html

   Tarun

   Oct 8, 10:49 AM #

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