- Joined
- Jul 30, 2001
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- 633
I could have sworn they grow ears too.
James Whitehead said:...while
the earlier post seemed to suggest a hominculus.
Did that show alongside ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOS.:blah: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.
naitaka said:IMHO the movie was embarrassingly bad (Tony Curtis???) but the book, by Graham Masterton, was pretty good.
Yes, there was a whole episode where the townescargot said:Didn't a teacher in 'South Park' have an undeveloped foetus growing from her head?
Orbyn said:
Orbyn said:
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.
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."
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.
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
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').
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.
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.