ABSTRACT
The harrowing case of Re A (Children), conjoined twins separated in the knowledge that one would die, has relevance to many other areas of medical ethics and ethics of homicide. In what follows, I will leave aside questions concerning the extent of parents’ rights to refuse consent to operations on their children. I will focus on the question whether separating conjoined twins, where one twin will die as a result, is justified in any situation, with or without the parents’ consent. Such operations are extremely rare; however, they help us to focus on moral principles which apply in other situations where the interests of two subjects are thought to be in conflict.
