Think of a father who realizes that his twin
brother, who has never been born, is actually his
son’s father. That is, an unborn man
genetically becomes the father of a child or,
simply put, the father is in fact his son's uncle.
How is it possible? The living father, in this case,
is actually a human chimera, a hybrid that is
composed of genetically distinct cells as a result
of what scientists call chimerism, in reference to
a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid of different
animals in ancient Greek mythology.
A 34-year-old American man took a paternity test
after his son’s blood type neither matched his own,
nor his wife’s. The results showed that the man is not
the boy's father. Puzzled doctors, then, revealed that
the baby boy actually belongs, genetically, to the
man’s dead twin, whose DNA had been absorbed by
the man while developing in his mother’s womb,
British daily The Independent reported on Sunday.
The Washington couple had the child with the help of fertility clinic procedures after it turned out that they cannot have children.
They first feared that the man’s sperm might have
been mixed up with others’ at the fertility clinic, but it
was revealed that he had been the only white donor
on the day in question, and their son was Caucasian.
Doctors showed that the son and father were
genetically related, but the father was, genetically, the
son’s uncle, who was born dead due to a miscarriage.
Further testing revealed that at least 10 percent of the
man’s sperm came from his reabsorbed brother,
during their mother’s pregnancy.
Human Chimerism, though seemingly bizarre, is a
known phenomenon with about 100 cases reported
in the medical literature, but as genes only feature in
detectable amounts in very few organs, searches for
chimeras are incredibly complicated. The
Washington case, for example, had cheek cells that
displayed just one set of genes, different from those
present in the sperm.
A study conducted in 1996 revealed that Chimerism
in humans “is not rare” and affects about 8 percent of multiple births.
The latest case is the first one ever to have fooled a
paternity test.

Kreysik:
Think of a father who realizes that his twin
brother, who has never been born, is actually his
son’s father. That is, an unborn man
genetically becomes the father of a child or,
simply put, the father is in fact his son's uncle.
How is it possible? The living father, in this case,
is actually a human chimera, a hybrid that is
composed of genetically distinct cells as a result
of what scientists call chimerism, in reference to
a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid of different
animals in ancient Greek mythology.
A 34-year-old American man took a paternity test
after his son’s blood type neither matched his own,
nor his wife’s. The results showed that the man is not
the boy's father. Puzzled doctors, then, revealed that
the baby boy actually belongs, genetically, to the
man’s dead twin, whose DNA had been absorbed by
the man while developing in his mother’s womb,
British daily The Independent reported on Sunday.
The Washington couple had the child with the help of fertility clinic procedures after it turned out that they cannot have children.
They first feared that the man’s sperm might have
been mixed up with others’ at the fertility clinic, but it
was revealed that he had been the only white donor
on the day in question, and their son was Caucasian.
Doctors showed that the son and father were
genetically related, but the father was, genetically, the
son’s uncle, who was born dead due to a miscarriage.
Further testing revealed that at least 10 percent of the
man’s sperm came from his reabsorbed brother,
during their mother’s pregnancy.
Human Chimerism, though seemingly bizarre, is a
known phenomenon with about 100 cases reported
in the medical literature, but as genes only feature in
detectable amounts in very few organs, searches for
chimeras are incredibly complicated. The
Washington case, for example, had cheek cells that
displayed just one set of genes, different from those
present in the sperm.
A study conducted in 1996 revealed that Chimerism
in humans “is not rare” and affects about 8 percent of multiple births.
The latest case is the first one ever to have fooled a
paternity test.

thank God it did not happen in Naija.

oh great.

i thought i had seen it all.