Chimeras and parasitic twins

[DL82]

Has the Church ever said anything about whether chimeras or parasitic twins have two souls?

A chimera is where two zygotes develop and then fuse to form ONE organism with two different genetic codes. So, for example, one arm, lung and the liver might belong to twin A, the rest of the body to twin B, but there would be nothing ‘spare’, the two genetic codes develop according to only one ‘plan’ so to speak. Does such a person have two souls? Did they have two souls at some point in the past? If so, what happened to soul number 2?

A parasitic twin occurs where two zygotes develop and then fuse so that one is inside the other. Twin A gets the whole blood supply from the umbilical cord, and Twin B only partially develops, so the parasitic twin might be a mass of redundant proto-organs inside the other twin’s rib-cage, with perhaps a vestigial foot poking out to show that it’s there. Would removing a static bag of proto-organs which subsists on the first twin’s blood supply but has no independent signs of life and no potential to develop into a human person have the same moral culpability as abortion? Does the parasitic twin have a soul? What about moral culpability where the parasitic twin is threatening the life of the other twin, either by crushing its organs, over-burdening its blood supply or developing a tumor?

Am not trying to play devil’s advocate. I do believe that we are human persons from the moment of conception, I’m just curious about these difficult examples.

 

[twosweetgirls]

Wow, what a great thought-provoking question! I’ll be interested in reading responses. . .

 

[kaws]

Interesting questions! I’m not sure

 

[seekerz]

Not sure if the Church has ever spoken on this, but I would imagine it has come up in the past.

The way I see it, when the twins bodies fuse, one dies and the remaining twin has a single soul. As for removal of the vestigial twin’s organs: if we consider that twin to be dead, despite it’s organs being sustained by the other one’s circulation, then removing it should not constitute an immoral act.

Those who receive organ transplants from dead people are not considered to be two individuals, even if they may be sustaining multiple organs belonging to someone else. Maybe we could see this as nature’s parallel to organ transplantation (or to be more exact, organ duplication).