The Vanishing Twins Phenomenon - Just for laughs, but True.

AFTER A NEGATIVE PATERNITY TEST RESULT; PAUSE DON’T TAKE ACTION JUST YET - DNA testing to determine paternity in the face of the world we now live in, is becoming a norm. Even the famed prince Harry jokingly asked his pregnant wife Megan, months before the baby was born, to confirm if he was the father of his unborn child and popular opinion then was acceptance of the need to know and a more pertinent question of; why hadn’t a test been conducted prior to the time of his asking was then on everyone’s lips

My story revolves around awesome findings about the DNA and why you might need to pause, if after cross matching DNA’s, you are solemnly informed either as the supposed father or mother, that you are only related to your supposed child and that there is no way the child you claim to be yours could have been a product of your own reproductive system.

That’s right DNA test result has been known to be negative for supposed mothers too.

I know what you are thinking at this stage” kids can be switched at birth” right! Ok o, let me indulge you by skirting round two very popular cases.

The first is the popular Kakamega twin’s saga where one of a set of twin girls was switch with a girl child born to another mother in the same hospital; the story only broke when one of the twin saw a look alike picture of herself on Facebook and sent a friend request, which was accepted at the other end. Each girl accused the other of impersonation and later agreed to meet. Comments from people on their striking physical resemblance prompted calls for a DNA test to determine if they were twins.

By the way results later showed that they were actually switched.

The second is of a certain nurse/mid wife from an African country dying of terminal cancer, who confessed to switching over 5000 babies in the course of a career that spanned over a decade. When she was asked why she did it, her response was, for the fun of it. Just imagine how many homes must have been wrecked by this dastardly act. This story though has since been confirmed to be a hoax by the hospital where she claims to have worked unlike my first case.

what is however true are cases of swapped babies, on a much more smaller scale either through mistaken identity where parents have similar names or for more sinister reasons where one child is taken in cases of multiple births or a living child replaced with another mother’s dead one or vice versa. Swapping of babies is as old as time; I can remember stories I was told in my years ago, about how  the wise king Solomon sat in judgement over ownership of one living baby by two different mothers.

But my write up is not about all these but to a more extraordinary occurrence. But before I delve into it, I would like to digress a bit more.

 Do you know that Nigeria is reported after Jamaican to have the highest number of paternity fraud cases in the world; doctors who work in DNA facilities here have reported a horrific figure on a scale of three to ten confirmed paternity fraud cases. A reproductive health company released their own figures a few years of one to four paternity fraud cases in Nigeria.

 Whether Nigeria women are that unfaithful or despicable is debatable and not the focus of this write up anyway men have been known to perpetuate far worse things.

Now to get back on track, which is discussing cases where fathers and mothers have had reasons to doubt the accuracy of a DNA test result. Take note that these are couples who have justifiable reasons to doubt the results of a DNA test.

 Leading us to the pertinent question of, just how accurate is the DNA test?

Before DNA testing, paternity was first determined by blood types ruled by the presence of certain proteins called antigens in the blood which gives rise to the A,B,AB and O blood groups;  Paternity was determined by cross matching the mothers and child blood group to arrive at the possible blood group of the father. This method has a possible 30% accuracy and is not conclusive.

Then came the serological testing method ruled by the presence of still more proteins in the blood; this method still threw up possibilities and has a possible 40% accuracy and is not conclusive.

This was followed by an even more accurate test method called the HLA test with an 80% accuracy still not very conclusive.

The 1980,s came with the discovery of the DNA as another means of verifying paternity, this method has advanced over the years. DNA testing today has a 99.9 % accuracy and is therefore very conclusive. DNA test can now be safely done in as early as eight weeks into the mother’s pregnancy to determine paternity. We have indeed come a long way.

DNA cross matching can therefore be deemed to be very accurate, so why would a mother or father be told that either of their DNA’s does not match those of their acclaimed offspring. Which brings us to the intent of my write up, which is actually about the vanishing twin phenomenon and I can only hope its details would not be lost to you, in my long somewhat unrelated or perhaps relatable preface.

 I first read about this strange concept from a horror friction writer Stephen king in his book “bag of bones” where one twin was said to have fed on the other twin while still in their mother’s womb. The protagonist in the book was said to have cannibalised his other twin. Just found out this concept actually happens in the real world more often than acknowledged.

Most pregnant parents and attending medical staffs are left unaware of multiple pregnancies especially in cases where this occurs with minor or no medical conditions. A woman in the earlier stages of pregnancy was told to prepare for multiple births but as the pregnancy progressed was informed it would be a single birth. What one might be tempted to ask had happened between the initial and later stages of the pregnancy? Faulty analysis perhaps incompetence or probably the prognosis where one or more Embryo is said to have just vanished.

 Advance testing like ultra sound which helps doctors detect heartbeats during early pregnancy have also thrown up cases where doctors observe multiple heartbeats when the pregnant mother comes in and then much later a single heartbeat with  no physical evidence of the other foetus; hence the term vanishing.

There is a very popular case in the united states of a couple who had a child whose blood type did not match one parent; in this case the father, perplexed they requested for a DNA test as they were sure that the hospital had mixed up the sperm from the man as the child was conceived in-vitro. The result of the test proved correct that the man was not the father of the child. They engaged the services of a lawyer who on further enquiries from renowned genetic experts asked for more detailed DNA testing. The result of which remained the same but revealed something more extraordinarily and new, that the man was actually the child’s uncle. 

Another popular case is that of a woman who gave birth to twins and had taken the purported father of her twins to court to file for child support; the judge on hearing requested for proof of paternity. A DNA test was conducted, the result on which grounds the judge threw out her case for child support.

The result was wildly weird in the sense that while the father was adjudged to be the father of the twins the woman was not their mother. The woman was stunned by this findings knowing fully well that the children were hers by birth.

Her lawyer was equally left perplexed by the woman’s insistence that the twins were hers after going through several cases in history and talking to genetic experts. He discovered that cases like hers were not totally out of this world.

What do all these cases have in common?

An individual normally has two sets of D.N.A, one from each parent but a weird fact is that some individuals have more than two; this individuals are known as chimeras; a word derived from Greek mythology which depicts a fire breathing creature with a lion’s head, the body of a goat and the tail of a snake.

Why do some people end up with more than two sets of D.N.A.?

Let’s answer by reviewing the cases outlined above.

In the first case further genetic testing revealed that the D.N.A of the man’s saliva was totally different from that of his reproductive organs; the only acceptable explanation was that the man must have been a twin, his other twin probably died during the first trimester of their mothers pregnancy, the genetic material of the dead twin was then absorbed by the living twin. Which leads us to the point that the genetic makeup of the man’s reproductive organ actually belonged to the twin brother.

In the second case the D.N.A result of the other children of the woman showed that she was not their mother, more advance testing showed that the D.N.A from her inner cheek swap sample was different from those of her ovaries. She was invariably giving birth to her sister’s children.

These unique individuals have more than two different DNA,s .This situation occurs less probably during blood transfusion, organ transplant, exchange between a mother and her foetus while it is still in vitro and more probably when there is a miscarriage of one twin in a multiple pregnancy, mutation or exclusion.

Cases of failed maternity or paternity test should actually be reviewed further when both couples are regarded as having been faithful to reach other, before you take any regrettable action, go a step further by confirming if you are a cannibal before rejecting your offspring or those of the twin you probably consumed in the early stages of pregnancy.

I will roundup with the case of a popular musician who had two disparate skin colours and had always attributed it to a skin disorder but who later in the course of his adult life found out that he had an extra set of DNA. Which is probably responsible for his different skin tones. I dare say the same scenario could also apply to hermaphrodites and individuals with extra organs, extra fingers and toes, different set of eye colours and the likes.