Poll: Your child is born without a brain. Would you raise it regardless?

[Cheeseless]

If it's been born, first offer it to scientific research. Then put it down. God this makes me feel bad.

 

[Cheeseless]

my biggest -snip- ever

Well, i'd say, following my previous post, offering it for scientific research is preferable to putting the child down. It'd still be possible for him to have a life, albeit not a normal one, which he wouldnt have anyways. So science, i think, is the best place for these cases, not death.

 

[dancinginfernal]

It would never be fully conscious of what it is, or possibly become a contributing and autonomous member of society.

Unless we discovered healing magic or something - which isn't happening.

So no, I wouldn't. The child doesn't have a chance in hell.

 

[GLo Jones]

The question was answered for me as, watching that video, I kept finding it jarring that they referred to it as 'he'. I mean, I know it's got the body of a boy, but I guess I just don't see it as a person.

I'd definitely end it.

 

[Korolev]

Without a functioning frontal lobe (or occipital, temporal or parietal lobe for that matter), it's a cruel mockery of a human being. It has no personality. It has no memories. It has no emotions.

It might be human, but it's not a person, and you lose nothing by letting it die. Why love something that is incapable of even knowing that it is being loved? Or what love is? Or is even aware of its own existence?

 

[invadergir]

There is a third option. Killing it and not giving it 12 kinds of medication just to keep it alive are different imo.

Its like saying turning off life support of a brain-dead patient is equivalent to killing them. They died naturally.

 

[WanderingFool]

Does the child literally have no brain?

As in no chance of actually being a person, just an expensive drain on funds?

I'm curious, because if the child has no brain, then they really aren't a person, there's nothing there that makes them a person.

So no, I wouldn't keep that child.

Thats... kinda cold... theres truth there regardless, but it still sounds cold...

And on that note, I would agree with Daystar. Not for the exact same reasons, but because living like that isnt really living. To me, living without the brain, just the brainstem[footnote]Which, BTW, I did not know a person could survive with just the brainstem... though from the sounds of it, it was incredible luck that the child lasted that long.[/footnote], just seems... inhuman...

IDK, maybe its just me...

 

[Tsun Tzu]

I'm assuming this is one of those things that is detectable prior to the baby's birth...

If that's the case, then abortion is definitely on the table for me.

Raising a husk isn't exactly parenting.

 

[Vitagen]

There is a third option. Killing it and not giving it 12 kinds of medication just to keep it alive are different imo.

Its like saying turning off life support of a brain-dead patient is equivalent to killing them. They died naturally.

At the end of the day, that's still killing the child, is it not? Even if Nikolas "died naturally," that would still be the result of willful inaction, whether it required direct action on the part of another or not.

OT: Er, um, uh . . .
*ahem*
Let's try this again.

OT:

Well, this is embarrassing.

One more time:


[HEADING=2]OT:[/HEADING]
I-- I-- Shit, I don't know. My gut reaction is to put as much distance between me and that . . . thing as possible. But calling it a "thing" isn't really fair, is it? While he may or may not be a person, Nikolas is still biologically human.

It's that whole "personhood" business that's the tricky part. While it certainly seems that Nikolas is brainless in both the literal and figurative sense, as j-e-f-f-e-r-s noted, there's not really an accurate way to gauge his level of awareness.

Spoiler: Snip spoilered for your convenience.

It's a difficult position to be in. I'm not all that naturally paternalistic, so I can't really see myself being in this situation. Hypothetically speaking, I think it would depend on what the mother wants. She has the final say when it comes to decisions like abortion, so on a matter like this, it would all depend on what she wanted. I'd probably like to keep the child, if only because he/she wouldn't have a long life expectancy anyway. You may as well try and get a few months of love and memories in there before the little bugger passes on.

What does worry me is the extent to which other Escapists on this thread seem to be willing to 'dehumanise' the baby in the video, and implicitly other babies in similar situations. By referring to the child as 'it', by trying to make authoritative claims on what the baby can and can't experience, and by seemingly misunderstanding just how cognition works in newborn infants.

Point 1- the child in the video is a 'he'. This isn't some still-developing foetus that is more cell cluster than individual. This is a fully formed baby, with lack of brain development being the only main difference. Presumably, he was born with a set of male genitalia, and displays all the physical attributes of the male gender. To keep referring to the child as 'it' just seems purposefully heartless. Just because you decide to use a different pronoun, that doesn't somehow make the decision any easier to make.

'It' is a general pronoun which, when used to describe babies, does so in an abstract, non-familiar way (the baby exists as a concept, not as an individual). When a baby is known to exist, 'it' no longer becomes a serviceable pronoun, because by virtue of existing, the baby will have a gender of some form.

Point 2- the child wasn't born fully without a brain. He still had a brain stem, which presumably controlled organ and bodily functions. The thing is, the fact that he has a brain stem means we cannot say decisively and with 100% certainty what he is and isn't capable of experiencing. We know less about the human brain than we do the recesses of outer space. We do know that people have suffered incredible, devastating trauma to the brain, and yet managed to continue carrying out some form of cognition. People caught in freak accidents, people injured in wars and conflicts, people we would by all rights expect to be brain-dead vegetables, but have somehow managed to carry on thinking in some manner. The brain seems to have some limited ability to rewire itself based on need and circumstance, to be able to bypass damaged neurological matter, and rewrite existing matter to be able to allow some form of cognition to continue. Therefore, we simply do not know to what extent the boy is unable to cogitate, because we do not know to what extent the brain stem has adapted to get by without the higher cortex. While it's obvious that there wouldn't be much chance for higher cognition, the fact that the boy seemed to exhibit some signs of response when stimulated by his parents means we cannot rule out that there may have been some simple form of awareness. We will never know, because we are unable to look inside other people's heads and see how they think, but the simple fact that it would be possible means that any talk of termination should be done with utter seriousness, after having thought through all the consequences, rather than being chucked out as a standard response.

Point 3- even if this child has no cognitive ability, and is acting purely on reflex, that doesn't make him any different to other newborn babies. All newborn infants act purely on reflex. They are not born exhibiting frontal lobal activity. If they did, then that would make the following 15-16 years of growth development rather redundant. Newborn babies all act reflexively, with no cortex activity to suggest that there is any real cognition behind their activity. If you put your finger in a newborn's hand, it will automatically grip it. If you put a teether (or a nipple) to its mouth, it will automatically start sucking for milk. There is a whole class of reflexes called Primitive Reflexes which pretty much amount to all the behaviour of a newborn infant's day to day life.

It is only when babies start to develop that they begin showing the brain activity that we would normally define as 'cognition', such as when they start exhibiting voluntary behaviour, rather than reflex reaction. So the point regarding this child isn't really whether functionally he's any worse than any other newborn: he's not. Functionally, and from a neurological point of view, there isn't a huge amount of difference.

What the issue is, therefore, is whether it would be alright to kill the baby on the assumption that, due to lacking a frontal cortex, he won't develop the same cognition abilities that other babies will. That he will, for all intents and purposes, remain a newborn for the rest of his life. And it is here that you start getting into murky ethical territory- if it becomes ok to kill this baby, because he will never develop the cognitive abilities other babies will, what about others? If a baby is born with cancer, and is only given a few months to live by the doctors, would it be ok to kill them as well? Because if it's only going to live for a few months, it's never going to develop beyond the same reflexive behaviour seen in Nicolas. If a baby is born with defective organs, would we kill it as well, based on the same logic?

I'm not trying to argue that to do one thing over the other is wrong or right. As I said, I'm not entirely sure what I'd do in such a situation myself. However, there are a whole host of ethical issues which must be addressed in this issue, and too many people are ignoring then to simply go "Hur hur, social darwinism" or something similar.

I agree with the majority in killing it, when seeing the video i just kept thinking put the thing out of its misery, it will never be human and is therefore subject to Darwin's laws

How do you know that Nicolas was miserable? What behavioural signs did he exhibit which to you suggested misery? If his brain stem is unable to carry out any form of cognitive function, how could he be expected to be capable of misery? And if it does show some signs of adapting to a basic form of cognition, how do we know that he isn't experiencing contentment instead of misery? He is essentially a baby being provided with all the things that any baby could desire: food, warmth, shelter, protection, love, attention... surely we should assume, given the evidence, that if he is capable of any form of cognition, it would tend towards contentment and satisfaction, rather than misery and suffering?

Secondly, how does lacking a frontal cortex mean you're no longer human? Plenty of people have had their frontal cortexes badly damaged, sometimes even nearly destroyed, due to accidents, combat injuries, etc. Do those people no longer count as human the minute they lose that one part of the body?

And appealing to 'Darwin's laws' strikes me as incredibly ignorant. There are plenty of non-human animals that we no longer subject to the cruelties of Darwinian existence out in the wild. My cats do not live life according to Darwin's Laws. They do not compete for their food, I provide it for them. They do not compete for territory, I give it to them. They do not kill to survive, as I guarantee their continued survival in future. They do not compete for mates, as I had them both neutered when they were both at the right age.

Even livestock we use for food have been taken out of the Darwinian ecosystem: we provide their food and shelter for them. They do not lead competitive lives, the hallmark of any Darwinian system. A cow on a farm has all its basic needs provided for it, through no effort or exertion on its part.

So please, do tell me more about how important Darwins Laws are. I personally am of the opinion they stopped applying to use the minute we started doing agriculture, and training animals for our own benefit, not the benefit of the ecosystem.

whilst i find it a little disturbing that people are referring to the person as "it" rather than "him" or "her"

A person is defined by his or her mind. Without a brain there is no such thing.

Or at least that's how I see it.

So do comatose people in a vegative state lose their genders then? If I was hit by a truck, and lost all higher cognitive brain activity in hospital, would I no longer be a guy? Despite the fact that I'd still have a penis swinging between my legs?

I again admit that I know what I would want to do in that situation, and that is to have as little to do with the child as possible. However, I don't find that to be a justifiable course of action. I don't know what I would actually do faced with such a choice, but I'd like to think that I could overcome my apprehensions and make what little time my child had in this world as comfortable as possible.

Captcha: "Which one is hardest?"

I already know that, Captcha. What I want to know is which one is right.

 

[Maxtro]

IMO, if the baby was not able to live without "science" after a couple of months then it should be allowed to die.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Um.... If the child has no brain, then it shouldn't be alive to begin with. I mean the brain essentially IS the person, the body is just a vessel for it (well obviously it's more than that, but a body without a brain is just an empty shell).

 

[Another]

I don't think I could.

With just a brain stem, won't the child just be a hollow shell? That's no life. I also think it would be to hard emotionally. If me and my girlfriend had a child like that we would probably be constantly depressed. Bad stuff all the way around. The parent who keeps this child has fortitude like no other and the soul of a saint

 

[TorqueConverter]

I don't know.

I don't have children and as such I am unfit to voice an opinion in the matter much the same way people who have not or owned firearms are unfit to support a firearm ban. Yes, it's that again.

I haven't had that life experience of fathering children. My knee-jerk reaction is to kill it but those types of reactions are of no value in matters such as this.

 

[kreekgod]

while i have no qualms about killing a brainless child, i would raise it until it became a significant financial burden, then i would sell all its organs
undoubtedly they could be of use to someone

 

[JediMB]

So do comatose people in a vegative state lose their genders then? If I was hit by a truck, and lost all higher cognitive brain activity in hospital, would I no longer be a guy? Despite the fact that I'd still have a penis swinging between my legs?

Something that never got the chance to be a person to begin with is hardly comparable to a fully defined person that ends up with some sort of brain damage. They may have ended up in somewhat similar functional states, but a comatose person has memories shared between him-/herself and the people who knew him/her.

And bringing up your male anatomy is hardly relevant when discussing gender identity.

 

[DaWaffledude]

As has been mentioned, the child isn't completely brain dead, so yes, I would raise him.