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Chimera Twins Story
skelley writes "Below is an audio link on this morning's story on NPR about Chimera twins, or people with two sets of DNA.
It turns out that every once in a while a set of fraternal twin eggs merge into one embryo. The resulting person has two sets of DNA.
The story says it is possible for a Chimera to have different sets of DNA in different body parts. This can cause complication for body identification, DNA typing for organ transplants, crime investigation, etc.
Researchers have no idea how common this is, but suppose that it is a reasonable percentage of all fraternal twin pregnancies, which would mean millions worldwide.
No text version. NPR often doesn't publish one.
"
Forget invitro. The increasing use of fertility drugs in the past 15-20 years has caused a massive increase in multiple births, and likely increased the number of Chimeras as well.
It's kind of odd this got modded interesting when the pictures are of chocolate mice. I suspect the moderators didn't bother to follow the links.
So it is with some reluctance that I have to be a wet blanket... I know a sweet little girl who suffers from the same pigmentation disease as Jackson. It is called vitiligo, and although not health-threatening, it can be somewhat difficult for children who get labeled as "different" because of the light splotches that appear on the skin, and then spread. When it grows to cover more than 50% of the body, many opt to bleach the remaining <50% so that they are at least all one tone. I believe such is the case with Jackson.
Of course, it doesn't help that Jackson is a freak in many other ways, but there are thousands and thousands of people in this country, many of them children, who suffer from this condition without being freaks in any other way.
They are lucky when compared to the diseases that afflict many other people, but the disease is relatively unknown, so I thought I'd add a few words here in their defense (but not in Jackson's -- he's on his own :)