In the news today

[masamuneehs]

If that had happened in America or Europe I wonder if some group would have opposed the inner twins removal as a human rights violation or something.

i was thinking exactly that. earlier today i was telling this to a friend of mine, and then his friend came over and i tried to explain to them. and the friend asked me, "so, wait, he was like pregnant?" And I said no so she asked, "But if it was alive inside of him all that time, that makes it just like a child, right?"

And I found myself saying this: "No, no... You know, I wonder, I don't think so, no, no it couldn't be human. I mean... It just, it was alive and everything and grew up inside of him; but I don't think it's human. Not quite. I mean, all the parts are there like in a human, but something's missing. I don't think you can call that human."

I mean, it was as old as he, 36 years old. But it could not communicate, it could not interact with the outside world. Literally, that guy's "twin" is what I'd have to call a "sub-human". It's not another animal, but it's not quite human.

[SK]

The twin wasn't alive for 36 years, it can only survive for so long inside his stomach.

[masamuneehs]

The twin wasn't alive for 36 years, it can only survive for so long inside his stomach.

perhaps you didn't read? You seem to have missed the pertinent part.,,

Sometimes, however, as in Bhagat's case, the host twin survives and is delivered.

They do not go into detail about the "twin's" condition, but it sounded like it had been living inside of him for some time afterwards, maybe even right up to the moment they removed it.

And thinking on it some more, removing the "twin" is the only ethical move possible. If you don't remove the twin, the man dies and the "twin" dies as well because it has been living off of it. There's really no other option and I can't imagine even the most staunch pro-Lifers arguing that saving one life should require sacrificing another.

[SK]

It survived past his birth and for sometime inside him, but it was not alive for 36 years...

Since you're sounding quite pompous, perhaps you need to take a biology course. The so called twin is actually considered a type of tumor, it develops tissue and in very rare cases can even develop organs, but is never actually an organism. Basically it sounds like in this case bits and pieces of foetus developed, even surviving past the birth of the host twin, surviving meaning the tissues developed using the hosts blood stream for nutrients etc. To think there was an actual twin surviving for 36 years inside of another human is stupidity. Where did you go to school?

[Kraco]

It survived past his birth and for sometime inside him, but it was not alive for 36 years...

There's no question of it being alive. Some argue even viruses are living organisms. This thing inside the man was practically a tumor, but it was certainly living tissue. However, I didn't get the impression from the article it was anything more than a collection of permanently underdeveloped parts of a human. Removing it would rather equal to removing a mutated third hand than removing a human (or a fetus).

[Assertn]

There's a difference between being "alive" and being "sentient"

[complich8]

or for that matter, sapient.

But some people who are considered alive and extended the same rights as humans are medically incapable of either sentience or sapience. On a deeper level, it's not clear that sentience or sapience is the property that confers independent moral status, and it's a fairly controversial stance to say that one or the other is necessary or sufficient for that -- if it's necessary, you can find infants and the mentally handicapped that don't pass the test. If it's sufficient, you can find animals that do.

The article describes the fetus-in-fetu as somewhat incompletely developed. I'd say, if it came out viable, I'd give it moral consideration. If it came out incapable of surviving outside of the host, I'd consider it dead and morally irrelevant.

Makes you think though ... if it came out viable, sprung from the belly of the host as a fully developed, viable adult human being, what would its life be like? Would it have an identity? Would it have acquired language? What would it be like? Could it adapt to life outside?