Janeway's Decision to Kill Tuvix

[Vandervecken]

Vandervecken

'Legalistic'?
Medical ethics are about morals.
As said, read up on the Nuremberg trials.

About you denying Tuvix, as a sapient being, has the right to own his own body and to live - ridiculous.

As for your 'advocacy' - apparently, you are under the persistent delusion that other people can't actually read your last post.

Wow, project much? I'M not the one citing the letter of the law here! it's YOU (and several others) who said there was no legal obligation to act to save people who are mortally hurt. I'VE been the one saying this is NOT about the law. I don't need a law to compel me to help two people bleeding to death on a floor--unlike you, apparently. Of course medical ethics are about morals--it's YOU who have been waving the law around like a get out of jail free card, or as if the absence of a law compelling you to help them is a magic wand freeing you of all responsibility to consider Tuvok's and Neelix's fates.

Helllooooo, is anyone home? Anyone in that little head of yours? I NEVER denied Tuvix is a sapient being. That isn't even an issue. AND I wrote that taking Tuvix apart is just as much murder as doing nothing to save Tuvok and Neelix--again and again and again. The difference between me and you is that I acknowledge that all three are people who count. Only Tuvix counts for you, clearly.


No, YOU are deluded. I never, ever advocated a single thing, and if you say so, then you are a bald-faced liar. My posts are crystal clear: BOTH actions are murder. Not ONCE did I deviate from that thesis.

 

[zarkon]

I've made more or less the same point.

But one part of a crime is Actus reus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus

This is part of what it says about omission

Omission involves a failure to engage in a necessary bodily movement resulting in injury. As with commission acts, omission acts can be reasoned causally using the but for approach. But for not having acted, the injury would not have occurred.

You could argue that the injury had already occured so the omission criteria could not be met and therefore could not be used in mitigation.

Yeah. And I think the act itself would be murder, so in this case omission would become necessary.

it isn't cut and dried.

NOT acting to save to mortally injured people would be morally and ethically reprehensible, whatever the law might have to say on the subject.

"This stuff" is applicable, but I'll subtract the vampire business. We'll make it a normal human who needs continuous transfusions of blood from two people who have been handcuffed to gurneys to create that supply. Eventually they'll die and be replaced by two others. It's done, a fait accomplit as far as you're concerned. That's what you're looking at with your eyes. The normal human is alive and fine, but WILL die without that blood supply. You need do nothing; you can just let those people die way ahead of their time, because you have no legal onus to do something, or you can disconnect them and save the one person draining them.

Cut and dried, huh?

Again, this is a false equivalence. In the Voyager scenario, Tuvix has already been given their lives to make his own, but there is an option to take them back that will kill him.

It would be as if all the blood had already been drained and they were dead, but there was some magical way to reverse the procedure after the fact.

The equivalence here would be if you could undo the transporter accident in midstream should you; which would be fine as Tuvix hadn't even been created yet.

 

[Vandervecken]

Yes but one requires an act, the other a lack of an act. As has been noted generally failure to act unless you had a duty of care to act does not legally constitute murder.

My point is that there's just as much ethical duty to act (or not act) in both cases. As I have written again and again, THIS IS NOT ABOUT A LEGAL COMPULSION. Although, for some reason, Chuckles here (Edit_XYZ) wants to ascribe YOUR position to ME.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Vandervecken

No, YOU are deluded. I never, ever advocated a single thing, and if you say so, then you are a bald-faced liar.

?
The rest of your post is just more of the same obfuscating-wanna-be rhetoric - already conclusively demolished by myself and other posters.

But this - WOW. Quoting - as an example:
"I DO recognize that I'd be killing Tuvix to return Tuvok and Neelix to true life[...]
YOU are the barbarian here--YOU are the one who would leave two people to die of phaser wounds in a corridor (were Trek real life)."

Of course, civilized one, you didn't made clear you would kill Tuvix. Lol.

 

[Vandervecken]

I've made more or less the same point.

But one part of a crime is Actus reus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus

This is part of what it says about omission

Omission involves a failure to engage in a necessary bodily movement resulting in injury. As with commission acts, omission acts can be reasoned causally using the but for approach. But for not having acted, the injury would not have occurred.

You could argue that the injury had already occured so the omission criteria could not be met and therefore could not be used in mitigation.

Yeah. And I think the act itself would be murder, so in this case omission would become necessary.

it isn't cut and dried.

NOT acting to save to mortally injured people would be morally and ethically reprehensible, whatever the law might have to say on the subject.

"This stuff" is applicable, but I'll subtract the vampire business. We'll make it a normal human who needs continuous transfusions of blood from two people who have been handcuffed to gurneys to create that supply. Eventually they'll die and be replaced by two others. It's done, a fait accomplit as far as you're concerned. That's what you're looking at with your eyes. The normal human is alive and fine, but WILL die without that blood supply. You need do nothing; you can just let those people die way ahead of their time, because you have no legal onus to do something, or you can disconnect them and save the one person draining them.

Cut and dried, huh?

Again, this is a false equivalence. In the Voyager scenario, Tuvix has already been given their lives to make his own, but there is an option to take them back that will kill him.

It would be as if all the blood had already been drained and they were dead, but there was some magical way to reverse the procedure after the fact.

The equivalence here would be if you could undo the transporter accident in midstream should you; which would be fine as Tuvix hadn't even been created yet.

Sorry, not false at all. In the scenario I gave you, the people locked to the gurneys are already locked to the gurneys and hooked up for draining, just as Tuvix's creation had already happened. And they absolutely WILL die if you do nothing.

Since Tuvok and Neelix COULD be brought back, then they are not wholly dead, really--just like the people on the gurneys.

 

[MacLeod]

Killing Tuvix is definantly fufils the criteria for murder because it requires an act, if you let Tuvix live and accepted the loss of Tuvok and Neelix does that inaction of not reversing the accident meet the criteria to be legally described as murder? I would say not others might disagree, if you think it does why?

 

[Vandervecken]

Vandervecken

No, YOU are deluded. I never, ever advocated a single thing, and if you say so, then you are a bald-faced liar.

?
The rest of your post is just more of the same obfuscating-wanna-be rhetoric - already conclusively demolished by myself and other posters.

But this - WOW. Quoting - as an example:
"I DO recognize that I'd be killing Tuvix to return Tuvok and Neelix to true life[...]
YOU are the barbarian here--YOU are the one who would leave two people to die of phaser wounds in a corridor (were Trek real life)."

Of course, civilized one, you didn't made clear you would kill Tuvix. Lol.

LOL--you think you've demolished something? All you've done is demonstrate zero reasoning capacity, and an endless capacity for misstating what others have written. The fact is I've obliterated you, but you're too much full of self-love to be aware of that.

Uh, yeah, I wrote that--and I wrote its equivalent in every post of mine where applicable, which proves MY point about you being a liar. I was simply repeating it again for emphasis in the face of your repeated accusations that I had written SOMETHING I NEVER WROTE. And here you are, lying your ass off again.

I wrote that from the first post. NO, only in your head is it clear I'd kill Tuvix. I never wrote that--at all. I wrote that BOTH are killings/murder. YOU, though, have made it ABUNDANTLY clear that you'd leave Tuvok and Neelix to die.

You're living in some sort of fantasy realm inside your own head, it seems.

 

[Vandervecken]

Killing Tuvix is definantly fufils the criteria for murder because it requires an act, if you let Tuvix live and accepted the loss of Tuvok and Neelix does that inaction of not reversing the accident meet the criteria to be legally described as murder? I would say not others might disagree, if you think it does why?

The fact is, I don't CARE about the legality of it, and I'm not going to go down that road except to say--again--this is about the ethics behind the choice, not the law, at least for me. As far as I'm concerned, it's for you to explain to me why inaction here is not ethically murder, not for me to explain why it's not legally murder.

if you want to call this a "win" for yourself because inaction in this case is not legally murder, then go ahead.

 

[zarkon]

Sorry, not false at all. In the scenario I gave you, the people locked to the gurneys are already locked to the gurneys and hooked up for draining, just as Tuvix's creation had already happened. And they absolutely WILL die if you do nothing.

Since Tuvok and Neelix COULD be brought back, then they are not wholly dead, really--just like the people on the gurneys.

They are wholly dead though. That they can be brought back is a product of voyager technobabble. It's basically the same as magic here. They are not suffering in some twilight world, unless I have forgotten something from the episode - it has been a while since I saw it.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Vandervecken

you think you've demolished something? All you've done is demonstrate zero reasoning capacity

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent". Yet again, you have proven Asimov's quote to be true.

As for what I - and others - have proven:
That is obvious to every non-morally challenged person; not having quite a few delusions helps, too.
Simply put, ethics (medical ethics) shows that Tuvix has the right to live, to his own body and any doctor is morally obligated to respect these rights. Indeed, not killing a person (child/whatever) in order to save comatose people in need of transplants is a murder only in your world divorced from reality.

As for yourself - I know, you cannot properly process such information, but using transparent straw-men, rhetoric, calling facts you don't like ridiculous/etc - or pretending what you've written a few posts ago doesn't exist any longer (lol) - proves nothing.
Nothing about the subject at hand, that is; it proves quite a lot about you.

You keep mentioning the Doctor as the person to murder Tuvix - despite me previously pointing this out to you. Apparently, even mentioning Janeway in this context by you is to be avoided.
You do at least realize that's quite pathetic, yes?

 

[MacLeod]

Ethics are subjective, the law is clearly written and maintained.

For example some consider abortion unethical but abortion is legal in many places. So it is entirely possible to think someone acted in an (un)ethical way yet (dis)obyed the law.

 

[Vandervecken]

Sorry, not false at all. In the scenario I gave you, the people locked to the gurneys are already locked to the gurneys and hooked up for draining, just as Tuvix's creation had already happened. And they absolutely WILL die if you do nothing.

Since Tuvok and Neelix COULD be brought back, then they are not wholly dead, really--just like the people on the gurneys.

They are wholly dead though. That they can be brought back is a product of voyager technobabble. It's basically the same as magic here. They are not suffering in some twilight world, unless I have forgotten something from the episode - it has been a while since I saw it.

I guess this is a Miracle Max situation. They were mostly dead, whatever that means. The fact that they CAN be brought back means they are not completely dead, by definition. Dead is dead--no return.

 

[zarkon]

I guess this is a Miracle Max situation. They were mostly dead, whatever that means. The fact that they CAN be brought back means they are not completely dead, by definition. Dead is dead--no return.

It's pretty much at the crux of the ethics issue though, and if I recall correctly, this was never made into any kind of an thing within in the episode itself - that tuvok and neelix were somehow "sleeping" within Tuvix. Had the episode utilised that, I would not make such a strong ethical argument(on legal grounds it's still abundantly clear either way of course).

Without that factor, it's pretty much the same as getting them back by casting a magical spell that kills Tuvix, so I remain of the view that doing nothing was the correct ethical decision.

 

[Vandervecken]

Ethics are subjective, the law is clearly written and maintained.

For example some consider abortion unethical but abortion is legal in many places. So it is entirely possible to think someone acted in an (un)ethical way yet (dis)obyed the law.

MacLeod, the law is subjective as well. it's created by men, and sometimes it's wrong, too, and sometimes the ethical thing to do is to disobey it. And I'm not even thinking of the abortion debate--that was never in my head as I've been posting here, although I recognize that many others bring these bags of preconceptions to the table. It's also entirely possible to obey the law to the letter and do the wrong thing, ethically. The fact that a law is written on paper changes nothing. It was illegal in slave states in the US to hide runaway slaves. What was the ethical thing to do?

But in this case, the truth is we don't even have the law to guide us. Do we have any idea of what Federation law is on this subject? How is it we can even begin to apply 21st century jurisprudence to this situation? Janeway and her officers were in uncharted legal territory--even for the Federation. So the best we can do is to fall back on our ethical/moral compasses, so to speak. That's all we can do. And my conclusion, always, in every single post in this thread, was that killing Tuvix is murder, and leaving Tuvok and Neelix "mostly dead" is murder as well, if they're forever left in that state of non-being.

 

[Vandervecken]

I guess this is a Miracle Max situation. They were mostly dead, whatever that means. The fact that they CAN be brought back means they are not completely dead, by definition. Dead is dead--no return.

It's pretty much at the crux of the ethics issue though, and if I recall correctly, this was never made into any kind of an thing within in the episode itself - that tuvok and neelix were somehow "sleeping" within Tuvix. Had the episode utilised that, I would not make such a strong ethical argument(on legal grounds it's still abundantly clear either way of course).

Without that factor, it's pretty much the same as getting them back by casting a magical spell that kills Tuvix, so I remain of the view that doing nothing was the correct ethical decision.

And it was a magical spell that disappeared Tuvok and Neelix and created Tuvix. Why is that spell alright? Plus I simply don't agree with you on the dead issue.

We're going to have to disagree, that's all.

 

[Vandervecken]

Vandervecken

you think you've demolished something? All you've done is demonstrate zero reasoning capacity

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent". Yet again, you have proven Asimov's quote to be true.

As for what I - and others - have proven:
That is obvious to every non-morally challenged person; not having quite a few delusions helps, too.
Simply put, ethics (medical ethics) shows that Tuvix has the right to live, to his own body and any doctor is morally obligated to respect these rights. Indeed, not killing a person (child/whatever) in order to save comatose people in need a transplants is a murder only in your world divorced from reality.

As for yourself - I know, you cannot properly process such information, but using transparent straw-men, rhetoric, calling facts you don't like ridiculous/etc - or pretending what you've written a few posts ago doesn't exist any longer (lol) - proves nothing.
Nothing about the subject at hand, that is; it proves quite a lot about you.

You keep mentioning the Doctor as the person to murder Tuvix - despite me previously pointing this out to you. Apparently, even mentioning Janeway in this context by you is to be avoided.
You do at least realize that's quite pathetic, yes?

I realize you're pathetic. I realize you're a liar. I also see you have a weak arguer's penchant for non-sequiturs, as the highfalutin' quote of yours from Foundation has nothing to do with this argument. I certainly took no refuge in violence of any sort. You like the sound of the quote, and want to show off. And you call me pathetic? Really, really sad.

And anyone reading this thread can see that you're a lair. You have repeatedly lied about the contents of my posts. In every single one I have made it clear that I consider BOTH directions to be murder. YOU'RE the one who would have no problem harvesting organs from two unwilling donors to save one person.

You've proven nothing, except that you've made it crystal clear you would leave two mortally wounded people to die. As you've continued to lie about my assertions, I have tried to accord your non-arguments some measure of adult respect and have dealt with them--easily.

Simply put, ethics--medical ethics--do NOT make it clear that Tuvix has a right to live at the expense of two other lives. Too bad, so sad, you lose. It is anything but clear. You keep conveniently ignoring that every single atom that went to make up Tuvix comes from Tuvok and Neelix. THAT makes a difference. That's not "whatever." it's "whatever" to you because you're out of your depth and don't really know how to respond.

I am not the one erecting straw men, that's your gig. YOU'RE the one who is attributing statements and conclusions to me that I've never made, attributions that anyone who wants to go back and read this thread can see are outrageous lies. To quote Asimov more appropriately from Foundation, in this matter, you've become "a blood-blind bull."

I didn't discuss Janeway not as any kind of deliberate omission, but just because it was easier to write about one person acting or not acting. You're not telling me anything new when you write that Janeway made the decision. The fact that you hold up this petty particular as some sort of argument trophy is additionally pathetic, as who makes the decision (one way or the other) hardly matters to the ethics of the decision.

Gosh, what's next? Did I misspell something?

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Vandervecken

Let's see - ad personams, insults. the usual demolished non-sense. Same old, same old.

Let's try an experiment:
Dude, you do realize all your straw-men/rhetoric/etc are in support of Janeway's act of murdering Tuvix.
At times, you even got carried away by your rhetoric and said directly what option your twisted morals support (the option of not killing Tuvix is barbaric, and this attribute is not applicable to you, etc).
But, because you came from time to time with a dictum that you support neither option, you actually think any reader is fooled as to your - let's euphemistically call them questionable morals? lol.

 

[DonIago]

So here's a question - what if killing Tuvix to bring back Tuvok and Neelix would have no effect, but Our Heroes were able to determine that subjecting -someone else- to the procedure would restore them?

"Ensign Kim, you're less valuable than Tuvok and Neelix, so off you go."

Some people here seem to be faulting Tuvix for having a strong enough sense of self-preservation that he doesn't want to undergo a risky procedure that may yield no tangible gains. Would Random Crewman X be any more willing to sacrifice themselves in such circumstances?

Hell, would Janeway...or Kes...put their money where their mouths are?

 

[Vandervecken]

Vandervecken

Let's see - ad personams, insults. the usual demolished non-sense. Same old, same old.

Yep same old same old mischaracterizations from you. And would you care to go back and see where the insults began? That's you, boychik, and they're continuing here with your non-response.

Let's try an experiment:
Dude, you do realize all your straw-men/rhetoric/etc are in support of Janeway's act of murdering Tuvix.

Nope. In the first place, you were the only one to erect straw men, and how--lying your head off about what I've written.

And in the second place, I realize nothing of the kind about my effective arguments, which, by the way, utterly annihilated your unreason. I repeatedly stated, from the first, that killing Tuvix was ALSO murder. LEARN TO READ, AND LEARN TO QUOTE.

The fact that I eventually posted more to support the fact that inaction to save Tuvok and Neelix is ALSO murder is because YOU took the opposite position. As far as you were concerned, in all your posts, Tuvok and Neelix were NOT persons, and Tuvix was. But at NO time did I write that killing Tuvix is the "better" choice.

At times, you even got carried away by your rhetoric and said directly what option your twisted morals support (the option of not killing Tuvix is barbaric, and this attribute is not applicable to you, etc).

Once again, you can only be DELIBERATELY misinterpreting my words, as I made it clear in nearly every post in this thread that both actions would be murder.

Look, bud, you were the one who started this epithet throwing with the Mengele business, so you can get off that high horse now.

But, because you came from time to time with a dictum that you support neither option, you actually think any reader is fooled as to your - let's euphemistically call them questionable morals? lol.

I'll leave it to readers to decide for themselves. Donno, do YOU think your outright lying has fooled them? Because anyone can go back and read what I've written, and it is clear as clear that I did NOT advocate killing Tuvix--from the beginning. That's YOUR straw man.

What I did was "demolish" your arguments, as you would put it. I'M not the one trying to fool anyone here. That's you, with your outright lying about what I've written. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me--you must be aware that only lying will save your empty and shallow "arguments." And MY morals are fine. I'M not the one who thinks leaving two mortally injured people to die is not the same as murder. I'M not the one who has made argument after argument in favor of harvesting organs from UNWILLING donors.

That's you, and it's all yours.

 

[Vandervecken]

So here's a question - what if killing Tuvix to bring back Tuvok and Neelix would have no effect, but Our Heroes were able to determine that subjecting -someone else- to the procedure would restore them?

"Ensign Kim, you're less valuable than Tuvok and Neelix, so off you go."

Some people here seem to be faulting Tuvix for having a strong enough sense of self-preservation that he doesn't want to undergo a risky procedure that may yield no tangible gains. Would Random Crewman X be any more willing to sacrifice themselves in such circumstances?

Hell, would Janeway...or Kes...put their money where their mouths are?

I just want to point out that I NEVER made an argument in one direction or the other based on the "value" of a person. Just so it's clear I'm not "some people."