This sounds like science fiction, but it's not. The woman who stars in this bizarre story--which is not from a supermarket tabloid, but rather the venerable New England Journal of Medicine--is now 52 years old. Her name is Jane. Jane had three sons, all grown now and all of whom were conceived and born the natural way. When one of them needed a kidney transplant, she learned that she--the mother--was not biologically related to her own child. Tests proved that to be true for two of her three sons. It's as if Jane conceived and gave birth to another woman's children.
The study, which was more like an investigation, was led by Dr. Margot Kruskall of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. New Scientist reports that Kruskall concluded that Jane is a chimera, a mixture of two individuals. What happened is that Jane's mother conceived two non-identical twin sisters whose cells intermingled in the womb and instead of growing into two people, fused into a single body.
The cells from one twin dominate in Jane's blood, but in other tissues, including her ovaries, cells from both twins live alongside each other. And that explains why two of her three sons have the genetics of Jane's fraternal twin. It's as if Jane gave birth to her unborn twin sister's children. There are about 30 instances of chimerism that have been reported worldwide.
The study, which was more like an investigation, was led by Dr. Margot Kruskall of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. New Scientist reports that Kruskall concluded that Jane is a chimera, a mixture of two individuals. What happened is that Jane's mother conceived two non-identical twin sisters whose cells intermingled in the womb and instead of growing into two people, fused into a single body.
The cells from one twin dominate in Jane's blood, but in other tissues, including her ovaries, cells from both twins live alongside each other. And that explains why two of her three sons have the genetics of Jane's fraternal twin. It's as if Jane gave birth to her unborn twin sister's children. There are about 30 instances of chimerism that have been reported worldwide.
