The Mum Made of TWO Women

The Sun [UK] ^ | November 13, 2003 | Brian Flynn

[quidnunc]

New York – A MUM has stunned the medical world after tests showed she is made up ofTWO women.

And even more incredibly she is NOT the biological mother of two of the children she conceived and had naturally.

Docs found the woman, named only as Jane, was formed from non-identical twin embryos who fused together in her own mother’s womb.

Her blood and some of her organs are made up of her own cells — while other parts of her body “belong” to her unborn sister.

The amazing condition, which baffled doctors for two years, first came to light when Jane was given the bombshell news that two of her three sons did not share her DNA.

That meant they could not be hers — even though docs confirmed her husband was their father.

Finally Jane was diagnosed as a “chimera”, a person made up of two distinct sets of DNA. There have been just 30 known cases, though this is the first described in detail.

Jane’s bizarre story, reported in the New Scientist journal, began when she needed a kidney transplant.

Doctors in the US city of Boston did blood tests on her three sons to see if they might be donors.

Instead they found two of the boys could not be her own. Dr Margot Kruskall of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston told how the results stumped her team and sparked a huge inquiry.

She said: “No-one could figure it out. One suggested Jane had secretly undergone fertility treatment using donated eggs. Another speculated she and her husband had got her sister to conceive with his sperm.”

The breakthrough came when tests on Jane’s brother revealed the sons were all related to her family in some way or other.

They then tested DNA from different parts of Jane’s body, including the thyroid gland, mouth and hair — and were astonished to find they came from two different people.

-snip-

[Capt. Canuck]

Way too freaky.

[Palladin]

Strange! I never heard of such a thing, but I guess it's possible. Fused twins. So the twin that did not develop lives on in her sister's children?

[Lucy Lake]

Pinging you to an article about DNA.

[concerned about politics]

Wow. There was a girl in high school that had two viginas. She said she could have sex yet still be a virgin. She would be right. She could save the other one for her wedding night, I guess.

[Prof Engineer]

Check THIS out ping

[JoeSixPack1]

Decisions, decisions, decisions!!

[4mycountry]

Just **** ping

[July 4th]

Hahaha...that's hilarious.

[Capt. Canuck]

I hate to think what her PMS would be like.

[krb]

[Junior]

As a Catholic, this makes me wonder about the "ensouled at conception" idea. Does this woman have two souls?

[Junior]

Y'all might find this interesting. P_W, this one might bother you in the same manner it bothers me, which is why I pinged you. You might have insights into this I don't.

[not_apathetic_anymore]

Uh oh...I'm not sure how, but I'm betting defense attorneys can somehow use this to refute DNA evidence

[John Valentine]

Do you by any chance know where she kept the second one?

[Capt. Canuck]

If she has two souls, is her husband a bigamist? Can he divorce one of them and not the other? Is the marriage license valid?

Getting serious, I don't see how it's all that different from somebody with a transplanted organ in them.

[Sacajaweau]

Did you get posted as "most gullible" in your yearbook? :-)

[Palladin]

Shhhhh....don't tell Mark Geragos about this. He'll say Scott's evil twin dunnit.

[VadeRetro]

Didn't know this was possible. You'd think a chimerical fetus wouldn't be viable. Immune system attacking body parts, that sort of thing.

[Junior]

Except that two children were conceived and melded together into one.