Posted on 05/18/2014 5:45:04 AM PDT by FR_addict
A mother in Australia who LifeNews previously profiled as preparing to give birth to conjoined twins — who share one body but have two faces — has finally given birth after refusing to have an abortion.
Renee Young and Simon Howie of Sydney said that a routine ultrasound found problems with their baby’s development and that the twins they were expecting were actually conjoined twins with a rare medical condition. The twins has a condition known as diprosopus, or craniofacial duplication, a condition whereby parts or all of the face are duplicated on the head. It is so rare, according to a report on the couple and their babies, that just 35 cases have been recorded in humans and no one is alive today who has it.
The parents rejected the suggestion of abortion, saying every day they get with their daughter, who may die shortly after birth, is a blessing.
(Excerpt) Read more at lifenews.com ...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2626008/The-baby-two-faces-Australian-woman-gives-birth-conjoined-twins-share-body-two-brains.html
She won’t burn in hell then like those who killed their babies and didn’t repent
From the article, she had the babies out of love, not a fear of going to hell.
good
Got bless her and her family.
For sure, one of the strangest births I’ve ever heard of. Yet these parents are so oriented toward life and love, that they accept these conjoined twins with pure hearts. You realize they must have been under constant and terrible pressure to destroy them. I am in awe of their goodness
Amazing. Pure love, pure righteousness.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22181528
Abby and Brittany Hensel are conjoined twins determined to live the normal, active life of outgoing 20-somethings anywhere. They have been to university, they travel, they have jobs. But how easy is it for two people to inhabit one body?
Like most 23-year-olds Abby and Brittany Hensel love spending time with their friends, going on holiday, driving, playing sport such as volleyball and living life to the full.
The identical, conjoined twins from Minnesota, in the United States, have graduated from Bethel University and are setting out on their career as primary school teachers with an emphasis on maths.
AMEN! Bless ‘em all
She can be the wife of Zaphod Beeblebrox
Learn something new every day.
God bless this family and the newborns. Only in America would the butchers say this should have been aborted.
“God works in mysterious ways.”
I searched the Internet and there doesn't SEEM to be an explanation of why THIS disorder is usually fatal. So many other disorders aren't.
I’m looking for an answer. Here’s the first input I found:
“In addition to facial duplication, anencephaly, neural tube defect and cardiac malformations represent the more common congenital abnormalities associated with diprosopus. The pathogenesis of diprosopus is not well understood.”
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10048094]
From that it sounds as if the condition necessarily entails other deformities. Why, as the quote explains, is not clear.
Second input (which yes, is Wiki, but on non-political topics Wiki sometimes makes sense):
‘Although classically considered conjoined twinning (which it resembles), this anomaly is not normally due to the fusion or incomplete separation of two embryos. It is the result of abnormal activity by the protein SHH (sonic hedgehog).[7][8][9] (The name of this protein was inspired by the Sonic the Hedgehog videogame character and is part of an idiosyncratic naming tradition in molecular biology research.)[10][11]”
“Diprosopus often occurs in combination with other congenital disorders, particularly anencephaly, neural tube defect and cardiac malformations.[14] When present, the brain may show abnormalities ranging from partial to complete duplication of brain structures, and/or underdevelopment of brain tissues.[15][16]”
“Most human infants with diprosopus are stillborn. Known instances of humans with diprosopus surviving for longer than minutes to hours past birth are very rare; only a few are recorded. In 2002 and 2003, two living male infants with partial diprosopus were described in the medical literature in separate case reports.[20][21] One infant was born with duplication of the nose and the cerebral frontal lobes, two widely spaced eyes, a small, underdeveloped central eye socket, and a large, asymmetric mouth. The other infant was born with duplication of the upper and lower jaw, two tongues ending in the same base, cleft palate, a slightly divided tip of the nose, and two widely spaced eyes, as well as absence of the corpus callosum, duplication of the pituitary gland and stalk, and abnormalities in the midbrain. Because they were born with a milder, partial form of diprosopus, both infants were considered candidates for surgical correction of their abnormal facial features.”
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diprosopus]
So what I’m gathering is that an abnormal development (caused by the SHH protein) is what causes this condition. I.e.: rather than being conjoined twins, Diprosopus is by nature a type of abnormal twinning. It’s too rare to be well quantified, but if you go to the Wiki article you’ll see two cases where survival (in human babies) has extended for years so far. Perhaps that will be the case with Hope & Faith. At any rate, they received the gift of birth/life, as opposed to a horrible death in the womb. We can all thank God for that.
AMEN.
You probably perused the same articles I did. You came up with the same conclusion only yours is more eloquently expressed. Thanks.
You’re very welcome. I’m so glad you asked the question. Strange as it sounds, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to wonder about it. But when you asked, I started to wonder too. In seeking an answer, I learned a lot. Thank you in return!
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