From: Smigrodzki, Rafal (SmigrodzkiR@msx.upmc.edu)
Date: Sun May 26 2002 - 08:49:05 MDT
Nick Bostrom [mailto:nick@nickbostrom.com]wrote:
While it's hard not to find the idea of creating
and then slaughtering anencephalics repugnant, it is also hard to make any
good sense of this aversion.
### Just to comment on the yuck factor - did anyone of the discussion
participants ever see anencephalic in real life? Touched one?
Well, I did all of the above. It did not evoke in me any feelings of
empathy, with its misshapen face, missing forehead and a huge fleshy wound
over where its cranium should have been. It did not breathe, did not cry
(BTW, how many of you ever heard the first cry of a newborn, a very special
experience?). The senior doctors told us not to try resuscitation, which
might have caused it to breathe, so as not to produce a semblance of
humanity where there is none. I found it vaguely repugnant. Maybe that is
one of the reasons, the practical real life experience which makes it so
easy for me to accept the utilization of anecephalics to heal humans.
Rafal
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