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Teratology: Teratomas & Parasitic Twins (WARNING)

If you go to http://www.fhm.co.uk, then to the 'reporter' section, then to 'Carnival of the Grotesque' you can see a film clip of an actual factual man with actual factual extra set of teeth/lips on the side of his face.

Plus, of course, loads of other really revolting stuff you'll wish you hadn't looked at.

Actually, come to think of it, & in all seriousness, the clip of the 'zombie baby' did actually upset me a bit as it is clearly just an extremely unwell baby. In all seriousness, skip that one if you are a sensitive soul........
 
James Whitehead said:
...while
the earlier post seemed to suggest a hominculus.
Click to expand...


Does anyone remember the film 'The Manitou' in which a lump in a woman's neck grew into a medicine man? No? Oh.
 
IMHO the movie was embarrassingly bad (Tony Curtis???) but the book, by Graham Masterton, was pretty good.
 
Mr. Bingo said:
Does anyone remember the film 'The Manitou' in which a lump in a woman's neck grew into a medicine man? No? Oh.
Click to expand...
Did that show alongside ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOS.:blah:
 
Now this is an interesting old thread (not Old Thrad). We have a few medical people on the board now, they must have interesting stories/opinions.
Is a teratoma the same as a "molar pregnancy"
 
Nope - a teratoma is a type of tumour, made up of cells that aren't normally found in that part of the body. Basically, they develop from embryonic cells that go walkabout in the early developing fetus, so that you get teeth growing in the abdomen and so on. Mostly these tumours make themselves known soon after birth, but a few don't develop until later in life.
A 'molar pregnancy' (properly called a 'hydatidiform mole') arises when an 'empty' egg that doesn't contain any inner cells is fertilised by a sperm. Only a placenta develops, producing pregnancy hormones - but there is no baby. However, a fetus does develop in the case of a partial hydatidiform mole, when two sperms manage to penetrate the empty egg together. This produces a highly abnormal embryo with too many chromosomes.
There's no connection between the two conditions - teratomic embryos arise from a perfectly normal fertilisation.
 
naitaka said:
IMHO the movie was embarrassingly bad (Tony Curtis???) but the book, by Graham Masterton, was pretty good.
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Agreed, the book was much better! But remember the
afterward, where it described the inspiration for the book?
It said something about a Japanese boy who had a tumor on his neck that turned out to be a fully formed fetus!

Creeped me out for years!

TVgeek
 
Didn't a teacher in 'South Park' have an undeveloped foetus growing from her head?
 
escargot said:
Didn't a teacher in 'South Park' have an undeveloped foetus growing from her head?
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Yes, there was a whole episode where the town
celebrated "Conjoined Twin" Day!
Everyone had dolls hanging off them...really disgusting! ;)

TVgeek
 
Does anyone remember the film 'The Manitou' in which a lump in a woman's neck grew into a medicine man?
_________________________________________________
Yes!!
Wasn't that the one where an unsuspecting woman gave birth to a fully grown man on the kitchen floor?
Made my guts ache for days after.........
 
I gave the trauma site a miss as the first link was bad enough for me. When I was 5 my uncle used to tell me not to walk on the grass in the dark or the worms'd get me. I just know I'm gonna have nightmares tonight. And as for the gerbilising - I never thought I'd ever feel sorry for a rat! Yuk.
 
Thats a shame my dear Susan, I think you'll miss out on all the fun as all the other readers will find out. It isn't all that bad just a bit red in some places, HAHAHAHHAAH(Evil Laugh):D
 
It's all very well having a laugh at these pics, but just remember that there's a tragedy behind every one of them.
 
Boy 'pregnant' with twin brother

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.

The tumour has now been successfully removed.

It is believed that the foetus grew inside Mourat while he was developing in the womb.

Doctors believe the two foetuses should have developed into conjoined twins.

"At first we saw that the boy's organs were squeezed by a large hard swelling covered with black hair," one surgeon told a British newspaper.

"As we washed him, we could see that inside him he had his own twin brother. Mourat had been a Siamese twin but nobody knew it.

"Something had gone wrong during his mother's pregnancy and the baby grew inside his brother."

Valentina Vostrikova, chief surgeon at Chimkent Children's Hospital, told the newspaper: "It was remarkable. For seven years it lived like a parasite inside the boy's body."

Doctors at the hospital told the BBC they were unable to explain the phenomenon.

They suggested a number of factors could have played a role, including malnutrition in the mother.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2987963.stm
 
Unusual but far from unique. The waxworks in Blackpool* used to
have on display a "Pregnant Man" who was also carrying his twin.
These little brothers can be spurred to life when big bruv. hits puberty.
How much life, though? :eek:

*This "Perils of Venereal Disease and other Curiosities
of the Sexual Life" section - strictly for display to the over-16s -
had originally been an exhibition from Liverpool's Dock Road.
 
One of the most unpleasant facts in the world is about tumours. Did you know, separate hair, nails and teeth can grow inside tumours?
 
Yeah, its called "teratoma" or something. There was a very, uh, interesting thread on it a while ago.
 
Orbyn said:
Ooh, that all sounds a bit The Dark Half .

The sparrows are flying again....

Poor kid!
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I was reminded of that too.
Sorry to go OT, but has anyone seen the film? I read the book and really enjoyed it, but I get the impression the film wasn't up to much.
 
Spooky angel said:
I was reminded of that too.
Sorry to go OT, but has anyone seen the film? I read the book and really enjoyed it, but I get the impression the film wasn't up to much.
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I thought it was fairly close to the book but a movie can never be as good as your own imagination.
 
Thanks, Pete. I know what you mean. Stephen King's books are never as good as films. As much as I enjoy them, the book was always better.

Ok, folks, sorry, back to the thread now. :eek:
 
Included twins

After watching '101 Things Found in the Human Body' the final/main one was a most impressive 'included twin' (also known as foetus in foetu - it is different from parasitic twin in that it develops inside the body) but I am having trouble tracking down any details - his name was Sanjeev and it was around 1999. He had been carrying the thing around with him for ages though.

What I don't really understand is the difference between this and a teratoma - there was a large quantity of hair removed from th Indian guy too. I found this article which suggests they are similar:

How did that boy end up with his twin growing inside him?

Alok Jha
Thursday July 17, 2003
The Guardian

It's the result of an extremely rare condition called foetus in foetu. While the condition is well documented, doctors are unsure how it happens.

This latest, bizarre twin-inside-twin story began when Alamjan Nematilaev, a seven-year-old boy from Kazakhstan, complained that he felt something moving inside him. When doctors operated they found what was described as his "twin". It had apparently been growing inside him since birth and had part of a head, some hair and even teeth. His mother said she thought it was something to do with the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster, and at the weekend C4 announced that it would film an autopsy of the dead twin to find out if this was indeed true.

Doctors are unsure what might cause the condition. One theory is that foetus in foetu is simply one of the risks of the embryonic development of twins. Twins arise either because two separate eggs are fertilised by separate sperm or because a single fertilised egg divides into two. The former are known as fraternal twins, the latter identical twins.

"There are various things that can go wrong," says Andrew Calder, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Edinburgh University. Conjoined twins represent the failure of a total separation in identical twins. "The assumption of this foetus in foetu must be that somehow the failure to separate seems to result in one twin being enveloped into the other one," he adds.

Philippe Jeanty, a specialist in birth defects at the Women's Health Alliance in Nashville, suggests a mechanism for this enveloping. One of the earliest places that germ cells - which go on to produce the testicles and the ovaries - develop is the yolk sac attached to the embryo. Rarely, the two yolk sacs of identical twins can end up connecting. If one baby's heart develops before the other's, the connection will make blood circulate from the healthy baby into the yolk sac and backwards into the arteries of the less developed baby. That could stop the second baby's heart developing.

"So now we have a baby that is developing as a parasite of the healthy baby," says Jeanty. As the embryo develops further, the yolk sac is normally drawn back into the foetus. In the case of the foetus in foetu, the healthy baby would draw in what is left of its twin with its yolk sac.

As to why the internal twin was reportedly "moving" inside the seven-year-old boy, Jeanty says that, to some extent, the twin can remain alive as long as it has a blood supply, and it may develop a primitive spinal reflex system. If it gets a lot of blood, it can also develop recognisable features. "Some have limbs and fingers."

This is just one theory though. Lyndon Hill, director of ultrasound at the Magee Women's hospital in Pittsburgh, says some cases of foetus in foetu could just be a teratoma - a type of tumour containing cells that can form virtually any tissue in the body. When these are removed, they are usually found to contain some fat, skin or teeth.

What experts do agree on is that there is no evidence that foetus in foetu or teratomas are caused by radiation damage. "To say it's Chernobyl-related, you'd have to find 10 cases in a one-mile area or something," says Hill. "A much higher prevalence than one single case."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisweek/story/0,12977,999292,00.html

This page suggests they are pretty similar (although I'll have to fish out a dictionary for some techncial terms):

FOETUS-IN-FOETU SURRENALIEN

Rare : 1/500.000 naissances.

Ana-Path : Willis en 1935 et Lord en 1956 définissent le foetus-in-foetu comme une masse possédant un axe vertébral, très souvent associé à d'autres organes ordonnés de façon appropriée. Sa localisation est généralement rétropéritonéale. Tumeur encapsulée développée dans la région surrénalienne , présentant à la radiographie et à l'examen microscopique des calcifications d'organisation axiale : axe vertébral , très souvent associé à d'autres organes ordonnés de façon appropriée. La localisation est généralement rétropéritonéale, exceptionnellement intra-abdominale, scrotum, encéphale.

Pathogénie : 2 théories s'opposent : la première considère le foetus in foetu comme un exemple de jumeau hétéropage inclus; la seconde l'assimile à un tératome foetiforme très différencié. Il existe entre l'hôte et le foetus inclus une complète identité. On évoque pour expliquer son origine soit une anomalie de la délimitation d'une grossesse gémellaire, soit un phénomène de parthénogénèse.

Echographie

Découverte tardive : 8ème et 9è mois.

La surrénale ne peut être trouvée.

1 cas 33sa : Masse arrondie, aux contours nets; 35 mm x 36 mm dans l'aire de la glande surrénale droite. Zone centrale échogène et zone périphérique anéchogène. Parfois composante liquidienne simple. Parfois sous-rénale

Evolutivité prénatale : pas d'évolutivité observée.

TDM : masse liquidienne avec formations ossiformes intratumorales.

Diagnostic différentiel

tératome ; la présence d'un axe rachidien affirmerait le foetus-in-foetu.

Dossiers du Collège

TERATOME

Peut siéger en rétropéritonéal; diagnostic différentiel avec foetus in foetu délicate : cf.
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http://www.cfef.org/archives/communication/tsuprarenale.html

although this definition:

http://www.amershamhealth.com/medcyclopaedia/Volume VII/FETUS IN FETU.asp

suggest the difference might be that one could become malignant.

The 1911 Encylopedia is good (you can't beat the unflinching use of the word monster):

Unequal Double Monsters, Foetus in Foetu.—There are some well-authenticated instances of this most curious of all anomalies. The most celebrated of these parasite-bearing monsters was a Genoese, Lazarus Johannes Baptista Colloredo, born in 1716, who was figured as a child by Licetus, and again by Bartholinus at the age of twenty-eight as a young man of average stature. The parasite adhered to the lower end of his breast-bone, and was a tolerably well-formed child, wanting only one leg; it breathed, slept at intervals, and moved its body, but it had no separate nutritive functions. The parasite is more apt to be a miniature acardiac and acephalous fragment, as’ in the case of the one borne in front of the abdomen of a’ Chinaman figured by I. Geoffroy St Hilaire. Sometimes the parasite is contained in a pouch under the skin of the abdominal wall, and in another class (of which there is a specimen in the Hunterian Museum) it has actually been included, by the closure of the ventral laminae, within the abdominal cavity of the foetus—a true foelus infoetu. Shapeless parasitic fragments containing masses of bone, cartilage and other tissue are found also in the space
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http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/M/MO/MONSTER.htm

Interesting aside - the Google search:

http://www.google.com/search?q="Foetus+in+Foetu"

offers the alternative search "Foetus in Fort"

The American spelling fetus in fetu brings up more results some of which are pretty scary:

http://www.ijri.org/articles/current_issue/obstetric_85.htm

http://www.ijri.org/articles/current_issue/obstetric_93.htm

Also this one (but the bandwidth has been exceeded so try again later - Google have a cached copy):

http://www.indianpediatrics.net/jan2003/jan-63-64.htm

There is a good page on parasitic and conjoined twins here (but again it has exceeded its bandwidth for the day - should be fine later):

Diprosopus. Common in cats and livestock, diprosopus is a condition that produces two faces on a single head. Humans with this condition are usually stillborn, but cattle and sheep can live for some time. The famous Two-Faced Chang of China was probably a victim of diprosopus. His secondary face was surgically removed in the United States in the 1980s or 1990s.

Parasitic twins. Parasitic or asymmetrical conjoined twinning can vary from a single extra leg to a complete second body that is fully dependent on the first. Mary and Jodie were considered a parasitic situation because Mary lacked her own heart and lungs and was dependent on Jodie. Famous cases have included Lazarus Colloredo (1617-1650s, who had a complete twin attached to his chest), Bettie Lou Williams (1932-1955, whose twin consisted of two legs, an arm and a head imbedded in her body), (1888-1966, who had three legs and double genitals), Laloo (1874-1905, whose twin had two arms and two legs and was attached by the neck to his sternum), Catherine McDonald (1910-1915), and Ernie-Len (b. 1931).

Fetus in fetu. When one twin is encapsulated in a cyst or tumor inside the other, it is known as fetus in fetu (Latin for "fetus inside another fetus"), or an "included" twin. Gould and Pyle speak of many fetus in fetu cases, including one in which an infant was found to have five fetal siblings encased in its cranial cavity. Many of these cases are exaggerated, but some, such as the case of the Chinese farmer known as He, was indeed extraordinary. The farmer, age 28, went to the doctor with a complaint that his stomach hurt. He was found to have a 13-pound fetal twin inside his abdomen. It had teeth, pubic hair and the genitalia of a 3-year-old child. Another recent case, Weylin Kleinman of Texas, had an 18-week gestational fetus removed from his abdomen shortly after his birth (in 2000).

Non-identical Conjoined Twins. The fact that this is medically impossible seems to intrigue people even more than the phenomenon of conjoined identical twins. In the era before the rise of scientific teratology, doctors such as Ambroise Pare accepted stories of male-female conjoined twins at face value, even providing illustrations of these extraordinary cases. In the 19th century gaffed twins such as "Adolph and Rudolph", consisting of non-identical people harnessed together, were exhibited. Some doctors still insist that Siamese twins can occur when fraternal zygotes implant in the same spot on the uterine wall, but there have been no verified accounts of this.

However, there have been multiple reports of non-identical conjoined twins - even ones who are of opposite sexes. Gould and Pyle describe a 'double-headed' child born to an Arabian peasant woman in Alexandria, Egypt. The twins, who were delivered stillborn after an 8-month pregnancy, had a white body with one white head, while the other head had the coloration and facial features of a black person. Assuming this story is more than just racial propaganda, there are non-racial explanations (such as a birthmark) for the inconsistent coloration.

The famous Edward Mordake, who killed himself at the age of 23, supposedly had a second face on the back of his head. The face was that of a female and was fully functional. It even spoke to Mordake, telling him to do evil things. He finally chose suicide as an escape from this "devil twin". This story is definitely exaggerated, though it is not known whether or not Mordake existed, or whether he had two faces (see 'Diprosopus').
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http://phreeque.tripod.com/conjoined_twins.html

but no mention of the guy I was looking for.

Oooooooooo slightly off topc but I found this page which claims:

Facts About Multiples is an online encyclopedia about multiple births like the Guinness Book of Records, with information on oldest multiples, most born, highest surviving, and so on.
Click to expand...

http://mypage.direct.ca/c/csamson/multiples.html

and has ino on conjoined twins and they have all the facts and figures:

http://mypage.direct.ca/c/csamson/multiples.html

There is lso a good picture of Laloo the Hindoo and his conjoined twin here:

http://www.stevenbolin.com/freaks/laloo.html

and some conjoined and parasitic twins here (the latter including "Piramal and Sami, Brother and Sister Double-bodied Hindoo Enigma"):

http://www.missioncreep.com/mundie/gallery/gallery1.htm

Ripley, Ringling and Barnum in 2 links - I'll stop rambling now ;)

Emps
 
Evilsprout said:
I've got a book with a photo of him in it on the bookshelf behind me. If anyone's really desperate to see it, I'll scan it in for them.
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Please scan the picture. I would not mind having a nigthmare afterwards.
 
SACAN! SCAN! SCAN!
Please.
:D
 
FHM's Zombie Baby

One of the earlier posts mentioned the 'Zombie' Baby on the FHM website. I realise that this is a tragically ill baby but does anyone know what on earth caused such a terrible mutation?
If you go to the site do think twice, the image has stayed with me quite some time.
 
Think I'll miss the zombie baby.... :cross eye

There was a woman in her early 20s at my boyfriend's work who had a benign ovarian growth that had teeth and she was told that it was a kind of twin.

There was a woman I knew whose mother had to operated on as, in her 50s, her stomach swelled as if she was pregnant. She was carrying a thing - it had hair, teeth - it was the size of a baby, but wasn't actually a baby, and had never been alive. It's now in a jar in the basement of a hospital.

My friend's aunt had a cleaning lady. This poor lady gave birth and after the baby had come out, the doctor said there was something still 'in there'. In the womb was a shrivelled old foetus that had miscarried but not been expelled. If I remember rightly, if you have the misfortune of having a miscarriage you have to make sure nothing is residual - no doubt that is one of the reasons why.

I get tonsular stones - when I first noticed this horrible thing, was terrified because it looked like a tooth growing at the back of my throat. :eek!!!!:
 
I've just seen the 'zombie baby'. Very horrid. That poor mother.
 
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