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-

[AloneAgainNaturally]

Yous stated-Some women have perpetual menustration. If this girl was telling the truth, she gave the wrong reason ("not team players") for her perpetual menustration. However I don't see how she can have menses with both vaginas... two vaginas, maybe, two complete sets of reproductive organs, no...

That being said, my best friend claims that he knew a man who had his organs reversed--the heart was in the right side, etc... that does happen, but the kicker is, his genitials were in the back as well. Yikes.

What? do you mean his but was in the front and his din*y was int he back?

[Frapster]

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.

I think therefore I am. This is the second time I've seen this article and it raises many interesting questions from a theological standpoint. Over the weeks (days?) since I first saw this article I have reached the following conclusions to my own personal satisfaction: The children are most certainly her biological children - regardless of the findings of the dna tests these children were spawned from organs within her own body. The organs are her organs just as much as a transplant patient can lay claim to the organ now housed in their body. And most importantly of all she is who she is regardless of the process by which she came to being.