Nikaya asked:

How did the legal system in England recently come to a conclusion which gave doctors the legal right
to proceed in the separation of the conjoined twins, Mary and Jody?

If this is what you'd consider a righteous moral decision, then how would one be morally aligned in
any argument to refute any further influx of abortion and euthanasia requests?

In consideration of the judge's remark that "Right to life does not include the right to be parasitic upon
nor malignant to the life of another"; in more realistic terms, What form of life upon this planet is not
either parasitic or malignant to another? And even better, What does mutation now become if the
claims of Darwin are correct in relation to it being the paramount process in evolution?

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I gather from the newspaper that it would be medical negligence to deny the twin who would be able
to survive as an individual a chance of life. The other twin, the "parasite" (a horrible way to describe a
potential individual!), would not have survived alone and would have caused the death of the one with
a chance of survival. If nothing had been done, both would have died and this would mean that the
doctors who could have allowed one to survive would have been negligent. It is not the case that
there were two individuals involved, since the parasitic twin could not have survived alone. Given that
the parasitic twin was not an individual because she could not survive alone, it is questionable
whether this was killing her rather than protecting the stronger twin who is an individual in the sense
that she can survive alone.

The legal decision isn't a "righteous moral decision". It is practical and protects the interests of those
concerned, and those concerned are individuals; i.e. the twin who as an individual can survive alone,
and the doctors' professional interests (the doctors, if they did nothing, would have allowed the death
of an individual). The parasitic twin did not have interests which could be taken into account. If there
was "righteousness" in this case it was on the part of the parents and religious objectors who saw this
as murder. In the eyes of the law, you cannot murder a thing that is not an individual, not a person.

This has nothing to do with abortion and euthanasia because in both these cases the death of the
individual is involved.

Surely, Darwin believed in the survival of the fittest. In the case of the Siamese twins the fittest one
would not have survived without medical intervention! Siamese twins, in their duality, are not fit. There
is a distinction between positive mutation and its converse. In evolutionary terms, Siamese twins are
not a positive mutation with survival expectations. But at least some survival is possible due to
medical science.

Rachel Browne