The Womb Twin World Blog

William Shatner has a programme on TV, here in Canada, called "Weird or What?". Weird name for a telly programme and I had not watched it until last night when, for some reason, I decided to give it a go. He was telling three "Weird" stories. The first was, in no way, weird to me as I have dealt with this situation in my work and, as I am not a scientist, never considered it to be weird. He was telling the story of a man who had had a heart transplant and, thereafter, developed the tastes, personality and preferences of the donor. As the heart is the seat of all of life's issues that does not seem remotely weird to me, but it did to Mr Shatner and so it was investigated. What was amazing to me was that scientists were interviewed who agreed that this could happen! They were of the opinion that cells retain memory of who we are; especially the cells of the heart and brain. Next he investigated perfect circles of ice in rivers. Again I did not find this to be weird. Surely, I thought, there must be some kind of eddy. In due course, this was proved to be the case. Having got this far through the programme I thought I might as well see what the last weird item was and I have to say I am glad I did.
A couple in the USA were in need of financial assistance and applied for State aid. I do not understand the process but that does not matter, the point which does matter is that they were required to provide DNA samples to prove that they were the parents of the four children for whom they were claiming benefits. So far so good. He was found to be the father of all three but she was found to be the mother of.......none! Her DNA did not match that of any of the children. How could this be, as she was the mother; there was SO much evidence to support her claim to be the mother, yet the DNA did not support it. Well, to cut a long story short, it transpires that there is a ..........I'm not sure what it is........condition, syndrome, occurrence, thing?...........where twins are created in utero and then merge to become one human being. It is called Chimera. It occurs at a very early stage of development; when there are only two or four cells. This results in the person having two sets of DNA. If it happens later and the twins were male and female then the person born would be hermaphrodite. If the merging takes place at a later stage still then there would be conjoined twins (as I understand it, remember I am NOT a scientist!) The DNA inherited by the lady's children was from her ovaries, but it was a different DNA to that found in her hair and cheeks. When DNA samples were taken from the usual places the DNA did not match that of the children. When she gave birth to their fourth child the judge ordered that an official was present and that samples were again taken, but yet again this child was, genetically, not hers! The true situation was discovered when they took DNA samples from her cervix and found a second set of DNA.

They said that there are only 40 people known to have this DNA anomaly IN THE WHOLE WORLD! Naturally, it set me thinking about womb twin survivors; could any of us have two sets of DNA? I enclose the link to Wikipaedia on the subject of Chimera, if you scroll down to "See Also" and click on Lydia Fairchild you will find the story of this lady (the version here is slightly different to the Weird or What one, but not markedly so). What an amazing story! What a frightening situation for her to be in! What an interesting thought to think that any of us could actually have, within us, our twin's DNA.