SURGICAL SEPARATION OF THORAOPAGUS TWINS: THE ISLAMIC LAW PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Eng and Chang bunker were the first pair of conjoined twins
recorded in medical annals of gynaecology and obstetrics. Born in Siam,
Thailand today, on May 10, 1811, attached by a five- inch connecting
ligament near their breastbones, Eng. and Chang grew and lived a fairly
private life and involved in successful business in North Carolina. They
later married sisters, Sallie and Adelaide Yates respectively, produced
21 children between them and lived until they passed away in 1874 at the
age of 63 years. It was after their death that medical doctors established
that surgical separation could have been possible. Recent statistics put
the rate of conjoined twins at a range of 1 in 50000 to 1 in 200000 births.
Though conjoined twins have been the subject of scientific exhibits and
medical study for quite a long time, it became a subject of courtroom
battle in 2000, when the surgical separation of conjoined twins, Jodie
and Mary, the children of Michael Angelo and Rina Attard of the Maltese
Island of Gozo surfaced and sought judicial intervention. The case
illustrated the difficulty of applying legal principles to unprecedented
life-and-death decisions involving proposed medical interventions for
children- particularly when parents and physicians disagree about what
should be done. Despite the proliferation of sophisticated surgery
techniques, the risk of surgical separation still stands high; in case of
survival of both of them, anaesthesia, surgical complications, and other
effects usually follow the successful separation process. But despite all
these effects, medical doctors are convinced that the present quality of
life is so worthless that the risky dangerous surgery is justified and should
be performed. This research presents the Islamic law (Shari'ah)
perspective towards the surgical separation of Thoraopagus conjoined
twins whose separation involves certain death of a weaker twin to save
the stronger one as presented in the cases of twins Jane and Louisa and
Mary and Jodie that will be reviewed in this paper.