Courage and sadness.Byline: The Register-Guard The medical risks facing the 29-year-old Bijani sisters, conjoined conjoined /con·joined/ (kon-joind´) joined together; united. conjoined joined together. conjoined monsters two deformed fetuses fused together. at the head, were enormous - and they knew it. But, as the Iranian siblings siblings npl (formal) → frères et sœurs mpl (de mêmes parents) said time and again: "We want to see each other - face to face. We want to see each other without a mirror." And so they asked doctors to separate them. But because they shared a major vein in their brains, they didn't make it through the 50 hours of surgery and died Tuesday of blood loss in a Singapore medical center. The plight - and determination - of Ladan and Laleh Bijani Ladan Bijani and Laleh Bijani (in Persian: لادن و لاله بیژنی) (January 17, 1974–July 8, 2003) were Iranian law graduates. captured the attention of the world. And deservedly so. They were trained as lawyers but desperately wanted to lead individual lives. As The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times reported, Laleh liked computer games, newspapers and books, while Ladan liked to use the Internet, read the Koran and pray. Ladan said she wanted to continue in law, while Laleh wanted to become a journalist. Their natural and adoptive fathers one who adopts the child of another, treating it as his own. See also: Father tried to talk them out of the surgery. The surgeons told them that there was an enormously high risk the surgery wouldn't be successful and that one of them, perhaps both, would die - especially given their age. Most surgeries on twins conjoined at the head are performed when they are infants. When their death was announced, their adoptive father said that they had been used as "laboratory mice." Their biological father opposed the surgery, but said that their minds had been made up to proceed. There were ethical questions involved in the case, the major one being whether the surgeons should have agreed to perform the surgery in the first place. German surgeons had twice refused to operate, once when the twins were 2 years old and again in 1996. But Ladan and Laleh were adults and insisted upon taking the risk because of their lifelong dream of independence. Before the operation, the Singapore hospital convened an ethics committee ethics committee A multidisciplinary hospital body composed of a broad spectrum of personnel–eg, physicians, nurses, social workers, priests, and others, which addresses the moral and ethical issues within the hospital. See DNR, Institutional review board. to look at the case. The committee determined that the twins knew full well of the risks involved but wanted to undergo the surgery anyway. In the end, Ladan and Laleh Bijani showed the world what courage really meant. It is for that they should be remembered - and honored hon·or n. 1. High respect, as that shown for special merit; esteem: the honor shown to a Nobel laureate. 2. a. Good name; reputation. b. . |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion