Saturday
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10/23/03
Conjoin This
I’ve never been a real big fan of fads. Sure, some fads turn into long term social trends, like overturning elections and our fascination with Gary Coleman, but mostly they just mystify me.
Take, for example, our recent penchant for separating conjoined twins. Or, when I was a kid, Siamese twins. I guess that term was insensitive to the Siamese. But then again, I don’t think there are any more Siamese. It’s all so confusing. Anyway, I heard on the radio yesterday that doctors, somewhere in the US, are getting ready to separate another pair of twins. I stopped for a moment and listened more carefully, thinking that I must have misheard and that it was just an update on one of the other sets separated this year. But no, it’s yet another new pair.
Now, lest I offend anyone by sounding as if I don’t care about the welfare of conjoined twins, let me assure you that I’m a weak-kneed, lily-livered, commie tax and spend liberal who thinks that precisely because we are the ones with all the goods, we’re obligated to share. So, that being understood, I still really don’t understand the whole twin-thing in a practical sort of way.
Namely, are conjoined twins becoming more common? If so, it seems to me as though some one should be busy figuring out why, rather than getting better at fixing the problem after the fact. Or, maybe it’s that there have always been a lot of cranially conjoined twins born and we just never cared that much before. Or, maybe doctors always cared, but only now technology is catching up with the problem.
Since I’m a cynic, I suspect it’s a combination of the latter two. After all, big medical centers of the sort that support these efforts depend largely on public grants and private donations, so salesmanship is, by necessity, a big part of the business. And hell, in this world of ratings driven life, what’s better publicity for your hospital than a successful separation? Remember the nonstop media blitz surrounding multiple births that followed the successful delivery of the McCaughey septuplets? My point exactly.
And, again in a cynical sort of way, I fear that may be the ultimate reason for the increase in very public, very risky attempts at these separations: people around the globe with few resources and little hope catch a glimpse of an over-hyped, Hollywood style solution to whatever problem they may be facing.
So… in the end, is it all good or bad? I dunno. And jeez, this all turned out a little darker than I expected. I should probably have stuck to making fun of archaic Asian cultures. After all, there’s nothing that kills at a party like a good Pol Pot joke.
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10/23/03
Conjoin This
I’ve never been a real big fan of fads. Sure, some fads turn into long term social trends, like overturning elections and our fascination with Gary Coleman, but mostly they just mystify me.
Take, for example, our recent penchant for separating conjoined twins. Or, when I was a kid, Siamese twins. I guess that term was insensitive to the Siamese. But then again, I don’t think there are any more Siamese. It’s all so confusing. Anyway, I heard on the radio yesterday that doctors, somewhere in the US, are getting ready to separate another pair of twins. I stopped for a moment and listened more carefully, thinking that I must have misheard and that it was just an update on one of the other sets separated this year. But no, it’s yet another new pair.
Now, lest I offend anyone by sounding as if I don’t care about the welfare of conjoined twins, let me assure you that I’m a weak-kneed, lily-livered, commie tax and spend liberal who thinks that precisely because we are the ones with all the goods, we’re obligated to share. So, that being understood, I still really don’t understand the whole twin-thing in a practical sort of way.
Namely, are conjoined twins becoming more common? If so, it seems to me as though some one should be busy figuring out why, rather than getting better at fixing the problem after the fact. Or, maybe it’s that there have always been a lot of cranially conjoined twins born and we just never cared that much before. Or, maybe doctors always cared, but only now technology is catching up with the problem.
Since I’m a cynic, I suspect it’s a combination of the latter two. After all, big medical centers of the sort that support these efforts depend largely on public grants and private donations, so salesmanship is, by necessity, a big part of the business. And hell, in this world of ratings driven life, what’s better publicity for your hospital than a successful separation? Remember the nonstop media blitz surrounding multiple births that followed the successful delivery of the McCaughey septuplets? My point exactly.
And, again in a cynical sort of way, I fear that may be the ultimate reason for the increase in very public, very risky attempts at these separations: people around the globe with few resources and little hope catch a glimpse of an over-hyped, Hollywood style solution to whatever problem they may be facing.
So… in the end, is it all good or bad? I dunno. And jeez, this all turned out a little darker than I expected. I should probably have stuck to making fun of archaic Asian cultures. After all, there’s nothing that kills at a party like a good Pol Pot joke.
