Is Destroying 'Satellite Heads' Murder?

[Marat]

Although multi-headed teratomas are much more common among sheep than humans, occasionally some humans are born with a vestigial extra head embedded on the side of their normal head. These so-called 'satellite heads' are usually about the size of a human fist and located on the back or side of the primary head, and they are also neurologically linked to the rest of the head, moving their lips or batting their eyes when the primary head makes the corresponding movements. The first reported case was in England in the 12th century, when Edward Mordrake was born with a head having a female appearance growing out of the back of his own head.

 

Improvements in surgical techniques have permitted these extra heads, which are socially crippling to the people afflicted with them, to be removed, and when excised these satellite heads have turned out to have their own independent vestigial brain. This raises the interesting question whether removing and thus 'killing' these heads amounts to murder, since killing any being with a human form, even if it is an anencephalic baby born alive, having a brain much less developed even than the brain of these satellite heads, is legally classified as murder.