Posted on 07/09/2003 8:14:20 PM PDT by Hank Kerchief
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Doctors have removed a 4lb baby boy from the stomach of his seven-year-old twin brother.
Alamjan Nematilaev was born with the freak foetus growing inside him.
For seven years it lived like a parasite until a school doctor became alarmed about Alamjan's bulging tummy and took him to hospital.
Surgeons who gave him a scan operated immediately, unaware that the baby was attached to the boy's blood vessels and still alive.
They saved Alamjan from certain death, but knew the 8 inch foetus was doomed.
Maksud ai-Magaibetov, who removed the baby, said: "Thank God the school doctor insisted on taking him to hospital. If this had gone on, we would not have been able to rescue him."
And in a blast at Alamjan's parents, he added: "To my mind it was impossible not to notice the size of his belly.
"I mean, the boy really looked like a woman in her sixth month of pregnancy."
The bizarre story of Alamjan reads like the plot from a horror novel.
His tummy grew and grew, but his plight went undiscovered for years because his parents thought he had rickets, a common childhood disease in his native Kazakhstan.
Then, after a gym lessson, his school doctor took him for a medical examination.
Consultants were baffled by the mystery lump - until they took a scan.
His mother Gulnara, 30, said she almost fainted when doctors broke the news.
She added: "I was stunned. It's just not what you expect to hear. We knew he was a bit overweight, but pregnant?
"However, I could tell from the solemn expressions of the doctors that they weren't joking."
GULNARA admitted that she told Alamjan off for making up stories when he complained of something moving inside him.
"I hadn't listened properly and told him to be quiet," she sobbed.
Alamjan's medical condition is not new, but doctors claim his case is unique because the others have been detected far earlier.
Dr ai-Magaibetov said: "We couldn't believe our eyes when we scanned him.
"We could see the clear shape of a baby inside him. And it wasn't a small baby. We have never heard of a case like it."
Dr Valentina Vostrikova, who led the medical team, said: "It was remarkable - for almost seven years it lived like a parasite inside the boy's body.
"The embryo was recognisably male and lay in such a way that he sustained himself from his brother.
"Technically, the baby was alive, yet was not sustainable when separated from his brother."
Alamjan's gran Mantsura said: "The doctors showed us the poor little twin. He was a big boy, with a head, a body, hair, nails and a penis. We just can't believe he was growing inside our boy."
Gulnara plans to keep the tragedy a secret from Alamjan.
She explained: "I don't want to frighten him, because he won't understand it.
"He doesn't know how babies come into the world, and I don't think we'll ever tell him about this case because we don't want to shock him."
Alamjan has been told not to show the scar on his stomach to anybody.
He knows only that he had a lump inside him which has now been removed.
"I had a football inside me," he said, cupping his hands to show the size of it. "But my mum has told me to stop talking about it."
AUTHORITIES have tried to hush up the case, fearing it will disgrace their crumbling health system rather than create scientific interest.
But a full postmortem will be carried out to study the phenomenon.
Dr ai-Magaibetov said: "It will give us the answer as to what exactly happened and why.
"One cause of the abnormality could be radioactive pollution in Kazakhstan dating from Soviet times, causing the unnatural development." |
Boy 'Pregnant' With His Own Twin Brother - Link
Beijing - An eight-month-old Chinese baby boy has been hospitalised after doctors found he was "pregnant" with his own twin brother, state media reported Saturday.
Scanning of the boy, who was admitted to Xiangxizhou Hospital in central Hunan province on Friday, led to the surprise discovery of a foetus, Xinhua news agency reported.
Although the foetus was taking up two-thirds of his abdomen, the baby boy looked normal from the outside, although his belly seemed slightly bigger than average, according to a journalist.
The boy is the victim of an extremely rare condition, doctors said according to Xinhua news agency.
Baby 'pregnant' with twin brother - Link
LOL!
True story: we had a carry-in dinner at church about 2 weeks ago. I've made fun of some of the folks there because they drink 'regular' coffee -- weak. I drink my strong. As you say, bold and dark is best. (Dark roast Zimbabwean is awesome.)
Anyway, they made coffee for the event. Even the ladies turned up their noses at what was prepared. One of our guys actually thought it was OK to send another pot of water through already used grounds! We get it double from him -- he's a notorious penny pincher AND he likes weak coffee.
Too much, though, even for the ladies who all like what I think is weak coffee. What he had made had the color of WEAK ICED TEA!!
You should write ad copy for Longhorns !! LOL!!
It sounds as if the boy's life was threatened, so removing the fetus didn't pose an ethical dilemma.
But what if the baby's existence wasn't threatening his life? Sheesh. I guess it would be like a Siamese twins situation. That would be a heavy cross to bear, but one that I think he would have to carry.
It's a moot point. Apparently the "fetus" was dead. Here is the BBC reporton this story.
A seven-year-old boy who was admitted to hospital with stomach pains was actually "pregnant" with his twin brother.
Doctors at Chimkent Children's Hospital in Kazakhstan originally believed Mourat Zhanaidarov was suffering from a cyst.
But during surgery, they discovered he was in fact carrying the dead foetus of his twin brother.
The foetus had developed into a tumour but was found to have hair, nails and bones.
'No longer alive'
Doctors at the hospital told the BBC the tumour was the remains of his twin brother's foetus.
They said that while it was no longer a living substance it was feeding off the boy's blood supply.
If left unchecked it could one day have threatened Mourat's own life.
If the child inside was alive, and you remove that child
to save his brother, it is okay as long as your goal was
not to kill the child... the principle of double effect
is in play
I'm afraid not. The principle of double effect allows for the removal of diseased womb to save the life of a woman. If there happens to be a baby in it, that's the "second effect" of the first effect of removing the womb.
But one may not directly take the life of the baby, whether intentional or not.
In this case, the PODE would come into effect if the doctor's removed some blood vessels that were necessary to save the young boy.
But, this is more like the siamese twin example. Separating them to save one is perfectly moral.
In this case, I believe Moral Theology would say it is licit to remove the fetus from the boy and see if it survives on its own. By all means, such unborn children should be baptized straightaway as soon as the host-child is opened up, and even before it is removed.
Technically, I wonder if this a fetus?
According to Heribert Jone's Handbook of Moral Theology, when there is any doubt in the case of monstrous forms, anything that appears to be a second child should be conditionally baptised.
So, apparently, it was a direct attack on the fetus.
Not necessarily any more than surgery to seperate conjoined twins is an "attack" on one of the twins, especially in those cases shortly after birth where one of them is sure to die from hydrocephaly and the like. This is an extremely rare and bizzarre case of conjoined twins.
I hope you don't mind my sending you this excerpt and link to an article on this topic.
I think you'd be interested to know that its been successfully done before, but is not being explored by the Medical industry because there is little moral impetus being put on them to do so. It should be a morally good extension of the In Vitro Fertilization frankentechnology.
Second, it may in the future be possible to successfully relocate an ectopic pregnancy to the uterine cavity. This has been attempted several times in the last century, the earliest recorded attempt being ascribed to Wallace in 1917 who described a successful case following coincidental detection of an ectopic pregnancy in a woman undergoing laparotomy for uterine fibroids [Note 19: Wallace CJ. Transplantation of ectopic pregnancy from fallopian tube in cavity of uterus [Letter]. Surg Gynecol Obstet 1917; 24: 578-9.]. More recently, Shettles [Note 20: Shettles LB. Tubal embryo successfully transferred in utero. Am J Obstet Gynecol 1990; 163: 2026-7.] described successful reimplantation of a 40-day-old gestational sac using a glass tube pushed through the myometrium until decidua was obtained by gentle suction. A third published case via the cervical route has been contested [Note 21: Pearce JM, Manyonda IT, Chamberlain GVP. Term delivery after intrauterine relocation of an ectopic pregnancy. Br J Obstet Gynaecol 1994; 101: 716-7.]. Numerous other attempts using the transcervical technique have failed (Forsdahl F. Westergaard JG, Grudzinskas JG, personal communication, 1997). Grudzinskas et al. [Note 22: Grudzinskas JG, Palomino M, Armstrong P, Lower A. Relocation of ectopic pregnancy to the uterine cavity: a dream or a reality? Br J Obstet Gynaecol 1994; 101: 651-3.] have suggested that, provided certain prerequisites are fulfilled such as facilities for accurate and early diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy, counselling for potential recruits, on-call surgical and embryology teams, availability of rapid and accurate karyotyping techniques, and progress in the development of a suitable surgical technique for the removal and relocation of the pregnancy, the transcervical technique may be worthwhile to explore.
Ectopic pregnancy: overview of the problem
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