Conjoined Twins, Embodied Personhood, and Surgical Separation
Thursday, January 10, 2008
7:30 - 9:30 pm
Location: 2017 Dunton Tower, Carleton University
Speaker: Christine Overall
Professor of Philosophy and Queen's University Research Chair
Abstract: The birth in British Columbia on October 25, 2006, of conjoined twins Tatiana and Krista Simms immediately prompted media discussions, fuelled by medical speculation, of whether or not the twins could be surgically separated. Since surgical separation often results in the death or severe disability of one or both twins, the question whether separation is justified for any given pair of conjoined twins is inevitably controversial. I argue that the debate remains unsettled at least partly because of insufficient attention to the actual metaphysical status of conjoined twins, in particular, attention to their embodied personhood.
