Child Born With Two Faces In Pakistan: Photos
AT the Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi, medics are working to save a child born with two sets of eyes and lips, and two noses. She weighed 3.2 kg at birth.
The condition is known as craniofacial duplication.
The child is from Azad Jammu and Kashmir. His parents Shahida Perveen and Khalil Ahmed have two other perfectly healthy children.
Paediatric Ward Senior Registrar Dr Qaisar Aziz says:
“As feeding through the mouth is not possible [at present], he is being fed through a naso-gastric tube. The two faces are angled to each other.”
The parents’ pain is exacerbated by the news that an ultrasound test showed the unborn baby as normal and healthy.
In 2008, Lali Singh was born with two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes. Like this child, she had one pair of ears. Her parents called her “a gift from God”.
She was not without talent:
“She’s fed through one mouth and sucks her thumb with the other. We use whichever mouth is free to feed her.”
The abnormality is thought to be the result of a mutant gene that understanding scientists called “Sonic hedgehog homolog“.
This name originated via the famous developmental screen carried out by Ed Lewis, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus, which earned them the 1995 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The screen identified large numbers of mutants affecting embryogenesis, one of which was named ‘hedgehog’ – mutant embryos were short, stubby and their backs were coated in a mass of tiny spines. When similar genes were found, they were given related names – including ‘Indian hedgehog’, ‘Desert hedgehog’ and ‘Sonic hedgehog’.
Posted: 29th, September 2011 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
