Vanishing Twin Blog

Human chimeras are more common than you might expect. In Greek mythology, a chimera was  a fire-breathing creature  with physical traits of a lion, goat, and dragon. In human beings, a chimera is a person who has two totally different sets of DNA inside their body. It’s a bit less dramatic than a fire-breathing monster, sure, but it’s still pretty wild. Even wilder: Human chimeras aren’t the result of futuristic genetic tinkering. They can occur naturally, and some people don’t even know that they’ve doubled up on DNA. Here’s a quick guide to the ways a person can become a human chimera. It can happen after a bone marrow transplant Bone marrow  is the tissue inside our bones that’s responsible for making white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. In bone marrow transplants, doctor uses chemotherapy or radiation to destroy all the recipient’s diseased bone marrow, then a donor’s healthy marrow is put in its place. The donor...

Event Date: Sunday, September 17, 2017 at 2:00 pm Speaker: Dr. Nancy Segal Dr. Nancy Segal, the world’s leading expert on twins, has a new book that sheds light on over 70 commonly held ideas and beliefs about the origins and development of identical and fraternal twins. Using the latest scientific findings from psychology, psychiatry, biology, and education, Dr. Segal separates fact from fiction. Each idea about twins is described, followed by both a short answer about the truth, and then a longer, more detailed explanation. Coverage includes embryology of twins, twin types, intellectual growth, personality traits, sexual orientation of twins, marital relationships, epigenetic analyses, the frequency of different twin types and the varieties of polar body twin pairs. This book, and Salon with Dr. Segal, will inform and entertain behavioral and life science researchers, health professionals, twins, parents of twins, and anyone interested in the fascinating topic of twins and what the...

It is thought cells from a miscarried sibling were absorbed by the man while he was in the womb A US man has failed a paternity test after doctors revealed his dead twin, whose DNA the man absorbed in the womb, is the genetic father of the child. The 34-year-old man is the first ever reported case of a paternity test being fooled by a human chimera, someone with extra genes absorbed from a twin lost in early pregnancy. What a human chimera is, and why there could be more than we know? Approximately one in eight single childbirths are thought to start as multiple pregnancies and occasionally cells from the miscarried siblings are sometimes absorbed in the womb by a surviving twin. According to Buzzfeed , the Washington couple took a paternity test after their son’s blood type didn’t match that of either parent. After having a child with the help of fertility clinic procedures, they feared that sperm donors may have potentially been mixed up After the initial failed fertility test, they ...

Aaron Hicklin L ike many models, Hanne Gaby Odiele has a lovely limber angularity. Sitting in a Manhattan restaurant booth she seems to open and close like an umbrella, expanding when she’s in full flow, folding up when she’s mulling something over. Folded up and closed off was how she felt for a long time. As a child, she knew something was different about her. She spent a lot of her summers undergoing surgery, and was aware that she would be unable to have children, but the why was always left vague. “The medical world tells us that we should not talk to anyone about it,” she says. “Always, I was told to hide.” In this way, children like Odiele are taught to be ashamed of a fundamental aspect of their identity: they are intersex. It’s difficult to calculate the exact number of people who are intersex, but interACT Advocates for Intersex Youth estimates it to be about 1.7%, which is about as common as having red hair (1%-2%). It took a long time for Odiele, now 28, to come out of hid...

Cindy Arboleda December 19, 2017 Taylor Muhl first noticed she was different as a little girl in dance class. She discovered that she was the only one in her class who had a straight line running down the center of her torso, halving her body into two different skin colors. Muhl’s parents had consulted doctors, who wrote off the physical abnormality as a simple birthmark. However, her two-pigmented body was something much more complex than just a birthmark. As Muhl grew older, her health began to deteriorate. “I Am My Own Twin” I have a genetic condition called, Chimersim. I’m a fraternal twin who fused together with my sibling in the womb. I carry my twins genetic make up within my own body, which is the second color skin pigmentation on my torso. There’s only 100 cases documented in the world at this time. I’m on a mission to spread Human Chimera awareness and it’s link to autoimmune. _ This photo was shot outdoors in natural light, in cold weather by cel...

We recently (and quite unexpectedly) found out that we are expecting for the third time. Almost immediately after the positive pregnancy test, I was inundated with first trimester symptoms. Only this time, it was different. The nausea and fatigue were unlike anything I experienced with my first two pregnancies. I was queasy or throwing up all the time . I could barely move off of the couch. I was completely exhausted despite sleeping 10+ hours every night. And my belly? Holy cow, that baby bump came out of nowhere. Friends and family insisted I must be further along than I thought, but I had a different suspicion… I couldn’t shake the feeling that I might be pregnant with twins. The bump at only 8 weeks! I anxiously awaited my first doctor’s appointment. When the day finally arrived, I could hardly wait to sneak a peek at the little bean (or beans!) I held my breath as the ultrasound technician prodded around for what felt like an eternity. She spoke slowly as she pressed harder on m...

Hong Kong (CNN)  A team of Hong Kong doctors has described an extremely rare medical occurrence: what appeared to be a pair of fetuses inside the body of a newborn girl. They were both joined to a placenta-like mass by umbilical cords. Each one had four limbs, skin, a ribcage, intestines and primitive brain tissue, according to a study published this month in the Hong Kong Medical Journal . It was “one of those very rare things that make the world stand still,” said Dr. Nicholas Chao, one of the surgeons who operated on the baby. He said he’d never seen anything like it before during his career in pediatric medicine. The unusual condition, known as “fetus-in-fetu,” is estimated to happen once in every half-million births but has been reported fewer than 200 times worldwide, according to the study published by Chao and his colleagues. The baby, weighing about 9 pounds, was born in November 2010 to a woman from mainland China. The little girl recovered well f...

Doctors in California have removed a tumour they have described as an “embryologic twin” deep inside the brain of a young woman. Yamini Karanam, 26, a PhD student in Indiana, had been experiencing difficulties with drowsiness, reading and concentration. The discovery was made when doctors performed a newly-developed form of surgery to remove the tumour. The growth, known as a teratoma, had bone and hair. Ms Karanam, a student at Indiana University, jokingly described the tumour to KNBC, a California TV station , as her “evil twin sister who’s been torturing me for the past 26 years”. The tumour was found in Ms Karanam’s corpus callosum. “This tumour was smack in the middle of that, so extremely deep in the brain,” Dr Hrayr Shahinian told the BBC. It was not until after she awoke from surgery that she realised the details of her condition. Ms Karanam told the BBC that her reaction to the news was subdued at first, but later, when the anaest...

Link To Video A Kansas family is given the news of twins , only to find out they’ll most likely go home with just one newborn. Ian and Brittani McIntire were heartbroken when doctors told them that one of their unborn twins probably will die before he is born. Baby Mason McIntire has a hole in his heart and an abnormal brain. But the family said they are clinging to the knowledge that Mason is not alone in the womb. His unborn twin sister, Madilyn, is there to comfort him. On Tuesday, the family shared with their local news station a heartbreaking ultrasound image of baby Mason’s tiny hand clinging onto his sister’s fingers. Brittani said the ultrasound tech told her that her twins’ interactions are unusually kind and gentle, as if they know that Mason may not live long. It could very well be true. Scientific studies have found that unborn babies feel emotions like joy, anger and sadness in the womb long before they are born. “Most twins, when she’s trying to take pictures and s...

An infant in the womb is extremely open and sensitive to the energies that encompass her. She may experience her environment as joyous or traumatic, depending on the quality of feeling she receives from her mother. She is ordinarily deeply affected by the mother’s emotional, mental and physical state. She does not have a sense of being a separate individual, of having a separate identity. As a result, she does not recognize the difference between her mother’s experiences and her own experiences. “When mother is unhappy, that is how I feel” is commonly reported during prenatal regressions. For instance an infant responds to the emotional energy of an unhappy mother. Her reactions are experienced at a fundamental level, as body responses, rather than thoughts. She then forms an adaptation to the unpleasant atmosphere that envelopes her. This adaptation provides a way of coping with her mother’s emotional energies. Depending on her predisposition, she may adap...

Twins not only have a bestie from birth — they also live longer than singletons. And those two factors may be related, according to new University of Washington research. While twins have been subjects in countless studies that try to separate the effects of nature from nurture, a recent study in PLOS ONE is the first to actually look at what being a twin means for life expectancy. Analysis shows that twins have lower mortality rates for both sexes throughout their lifetimes. “We find that at nearly every age, identical twins survive at higher proportions than fraternal twins, and fraternal twins are a little higher than the general population,” said lead author David Sharrow, a UW postdoctoral researcher in aquatic and fishery sciences. The results suggest a significant health benefit for close social connections. The data comes from the Danish Twin Registry, one of the oldest repositories of information about twins. The authors looked at 2,932 pairs of same-sex twin...

You may think your body and mind are your own. In fact, you are a fusion of many organisms – including, potentially, another person. Words by David Robson, photography by Ariko Inaoka. By David Robson 18 September 2015 This story is part of BBC Future’s “Best of 2015” list, our greatest hits of the year. Browse the full list. Once upon a time, your origins were easy to understand. Your dad met your mum, they had some fun, and from a tiny fertilised egg you emerged kicking and screaming into the world. You are half your mum, half your dad – and 100% yourself. Except, that simple tale has now become a lot more complicated. Besides your genes from parents, you are a mosaic of viruses, bacteria – and potentially, other humans. Indeed, if you are a twin, you are particularly likely to be carrying bits of your sibling within your body and brain. Stranger still, they may be influencing how you act. “Humans are not unitary individuals but superorganisms,” says Peter Kramer at the Universi...



Thanks to a rare medical condition, a Washington state woman found out that pregnancy was not enough to prove motherhood; DNA testing indicated that she was, in fact, not the mother of her own children – so who was? During the course of a desperate battle to retain custody of her three children, it was discovered that her twin was the real biological parent. The twist? She, 26-year-old Lydia Fairchild, was her own twin. By the time Fairchild was 23 years old, she had given birth to two children and was pregnant with a third. Her relationship with the father had been rocky. They separated – not for the first time – and she found herself, at 26, a struggling, single mother; out of work and unable to support her kids. When she applied for government assistance, however, her world was shattered by an incredible revelation – one that led to criminal accusations and the impending prospect of losing her children to the state. In order to qualify for financial assistance in supporting her you...