Different gender conjoined twins?

[tpjunkie]

CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/10/12/italy.twins.ap/index.html

ROME, Italy (AP) -- Four-month-old twins, a boy and a girl, from Greece who were joined at the temple were successfully separated during surgery at a Rome hospital, a hospital official said.

Now correct me if I'm wrong here, but conjoined twins result from incomplete cytokinesis in the newly fertilized zygote, a process that if completed leads to identical twins if the two cells separate from each other, right? Therefore, all conjoined twins are identical twins, and must be the same sex.

How is it possible that a boy and a girl end up as conjoined twins? Some kind of fusing of fetuses is almost certainly impossible as well, because something only one in 8 million or so fraternal twins share a placenta, and thus amniotic sac. i.e., its extremely rare.

 

[idkew]

Re: Different gender conjoined twins?

Originally posted by tpjunkie
...only one in 8 million or so ... its extremely rare.

i think you answered it yourself. rare, but possible.

althought the CNN article i just skimmed used boys in the plural... so it might have been a mistake in your article.

 

[wdlove]

I found a very informative site about conjoined twins. It gives the Etymology, How are they formed?, Types of conjoined twins, Rare from, & Ethics of separation. I pray that the conjoined twins from Iran currently at Childrens Hospital in LA will be succesfull. They are craniopagus, meaing joined at the head. Occurs in 2% of conjoined twins. They are boys connected at the crown of the head. Boys are more rare than girls. I just pray that the real possibility of brain damage will not occur. The problem is the interconnection of blood vessels, blood supply is crucial to brian cells.

http://www.conjoined-twins.i-p.com/

 

[rainman::|:|]

gender is a good deal less black and white than you realize. one possibility here, tho not the only one, is that one or both of the children are intersexed... partially or fully...

would be pretty rare tho, considering the low number of both conjoined twins and intersexed people...

pnw

 

[ColoJohnBoy]

Bear ub nubd U haven't been in Biology for some time, but if I remember correctly, there is a situation where two separete sperm can fertilize a single egg. This is incredibly rare, even more so than conjoined twins or hermaphroditism, but it would be possible for the two to coincide.

 

[tpjunkie]

Two sperm can indeed fertilize a single egg, but the resulting zygote will not get beyond the blastula stage of development.

I think the article probably just made a mistake

 

[idea_hamster]

[OT]

Originally posted by ColoJohnBoy
Bear ub nubd...

Is that like ubby-dubby language from Zoom? And did I just date myself?

(Figured it out for "Bear in mind", but still....)

[/OT]

 

[rjrufo]

Re: [OT]

Originally posted by idea_hamster
Is that like ubby-dubby language from Zoom? And did I just date myself?

(Figured it out for "Bear in mind", but still....)

[/OT]

You did date yourself... and me too... I used to watch that show when I was a kid

 

[wdlove]

Conjoined Egyptians twins, now seaparated are now doing well at the Dallas Children's Hospital!

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/health/2552521/detail.html?treets=bos&tml=bos_health&ts=T&tmi=bos_health_1_12150110142003

 

[Doctor Q]

News from today At UCLA Medical Center:

Doctors Hope to Aid Dominican Baby with Rare Defect

An international team of doctors hopes to operate in the Dominican Republic next month to remove an undeveloped second head from a baby girl born with one of the world's rarest birth defects, caused when a conjoined twin fails to develop in the womb.

Girl With 2nd Head to Undergo Surgery (partway down page)

A 7-week-old girl from the Dominican Republic who was born with two heads -- actually an undeveloped conjoined twin growing on the top of her head -- is scheduled to undergo life-saving surgery on Friday. Two surgical teams totaling 20 people -- led by UCLA neurosurgeon Dr. Jorge Lazareff -- are expected to work at least 14 hours to remove the appendage, which shares arteries with Rebeca Martinez's own head, USA Today reports. The girl's condition is so rare that there have only been seven cases reported in medical literature throughout history, the newspaper says. "This is the second child alive with this malformation. The last one was 200 years ago," says Dr. Benjamin Rivera of the CURE International Center for Orthopedic Specialties in Santo Domingo. CURE International, a Pennsylvania-based charity, will pay for the surgery, estimated to cost $100,000, the newspaper reports.

Rebeca was born in mid-December in Santo Domingo. She is otherwise healthy but her brain cannot develop normally unless the undeveloped head is removed.

 

[shawnm]

i think you answered it yourself. rare, but possible.

althought the CNN article i just skimmed used boys in the plural... so it might have been a mistake in your article.

You see conjoined twins like this can occur due to radiation. Its call fusion. Were the twins fuse together after formation. Of there cellular structure.

 

[CanadaRAM]

You see conjoined twins like this can occur due to radiation. Its call fusion. Were the twins fuse together after formation. Of there cellular structure.

Great thread resurrection there -- 4 year old forum threads can be revived from the dead with massive doses of radiation or spelling errors.

 

[notjustjay]

Great thread resurrection there -- 4 year old forum threads can be revived from the dead with massive doses of radiation or spelling errors.

Is it just me or has this been happening a lot lately? I swear this is the third one I read today.

 

[weckart]

That's because modern threads ain't as good as they used to be. Some people prefer classics.

 

[Killyp]

No, it's because people don't check the date of a thread before they reply to it.

 

[question fear]

No, it's because people don't check the date of a thread before they reply to it.

Yes, but who searches for conjoined twin threads on macrumors?

 

[iMpathetic]

Yes, but who searches for conjoined twin threads on macrumors?

Probably just poking around on someone's profile.

 

[d_and_n5000]

No, it's because people don't check the date of a thread before they reply to it.

Heh. I do that all the time on these other forums I visit because at the bottom of each thread they have a "similar thread" function. So I click on one, don't pay any attention to the date(it sorts by relevancy and has nothing to do with date), get interested, post a reply, and realize I've answered the question from a member banned four years previously.