medical practice of Saudi doctors. A year-old
girl turned out to be pregnant. Doctors said
that it was the first incident in the history of
modern medicine. Arab media outlets
discuss whether the removal of the fetus
from the baby girl is going to be considered
a murder.
It turned out that the mother of the
pregnant baby originally had two embryos
during her pregnancy. One of the embryos
began to develop in the uterus of the other
child. In spite of the fact that doctors
describe the incident as unique, there can
be other similar examples found in history.
A 36-year-old farmer had the embryo of his
twin brother removed in the town of
Nagpur, India, in 2006. The man asked for
medical help only after his swollen belly
hampered his breathing.
Doctors were certain that the man had a
gigantic tumor in his belly. However, they
found fragments of human Instruments, hairs,
limbs and jaws in the patient and finally
removed a weird underdeveloped creature
having legs and arms with long nails.
In 2002, Indian doctors found a fetus in the
body of a six-month-old boy. The dead fetus,
which surgeons removed from the boy,
weighed one kilo, whereas the boy himself
weighed 6.5 kilos.
The anomalous phenomenon is known as
fetus in fetu. Such incidents are extremely
rare: an embryo inside an embryo may
appear once in 500,000 pregnancies. The
phenomenon always occurs at an early
stage of pregnancy. As a rule, the fetuses die
in mother’s womb.
It may also happen that a child with a fetus
inside survives the entire pregnancy. In this
case the embryo continues to live inside its
owner’s body like a trapped parasite.
A fetus in fetu can be considered alive, but
only in the sense that its component tissues
have not yet died or been eliminated. Thus,
the life of a fetus in fetu is inherently limited
to that of an invasive tumor. In principle, its
cells must have some degree of normal
metabolic activity to have remained viable.
However, without the gestational conditions
attainable (so far) only in utero with the
amnion and placenta, a fetus in fetu can
develop into, at best, an especially well-
differentiated teratoma; or, at worst, a high-
grade metastatic teratocarcinoma. In terms
of physical maturation, its organs have a
working blood supply from the host, but all
cases of fetus in fetu present critical defects,
such as no functional brain, heart, lungs,
gastrointestinal tract, or urinary tract.
Accordingly, while a fetus in fetu can share
select morphological features with a normal
fetus, it has no prospect of any life outside
of the host twin. Moreover, it poses clear
threats to the life of the host twin on whom
its own life depends.
http://uganda24.net/shocking-a-one-year-old-girl-was-born-pregnant/