Parasitic craniopagi. People with the most shocking physical anomalies

Nature sometimes presents a person surprises, which would be better and was not. These are developmental anomalies arising in the process of fetal egg division. One example is parasitic craniopagus, when the head of a normally developed child grows a second head without a trunk.

How does the fetus develop normally?

Pregnancy is still the most studied and at the same time the most mysterious process of interest to scientists around the world. The development of the fetus has been studied in stages, days and even minutes, but so far no one knows how and why there are failures of this amazing process.

The head and trunk begin their development from the first minutes after the fertilization of the ovum. You can see the head of the fetus at 4-6 weeks, when its length is no more than 7 mm. At week 8, when the face is fully formed, the size of the head is almost equal to the size of the trunk. At week 9, with the help of special devices, one can already hear a heart rhythm, although it is still very far from full maturity. Even a full stir of the fetus mother will feel only after 10 weeks - at the 19th week after fertilization.

Why does the second head appear?

A fertilized egg is called a zygote. This is the beginning of all the beginnings - the fusion of the genomes of the father and mother, a complete chromosome set. Most often, the zygote begins to be divided evenly after formation. But sometimes the zygote somehow splits into 2 or even 4 parts. Each of the parts begins an independent division. This is how monozygotes are formed, that is, twins that have been formed from one common cell.

The rotations can be very different. If the heads grow together, these are the parasitic craniopagi, the trunks are the thoracopagi, the spines are the ishiopagi and so on. Until some time, both parts of the twins develop the same way, and then one part stops development and just parasitizes the other using a common circulatory system.

How is twins living together?

Much worse than a normal child. This is originally disabled, forced to live together on the whim of nature. Parasitic craniopagi are the most difficult cases, because it is far from always possible to separate the unnecessary head by surgical means. The second head also lives, sometimes it can smile or blink, it feels pain and reacts to irritants. On two heads there is a common brain, and therefore the nature of the surgeon can no longer change.

The most surprising thing is that there is a face on the extra head, and it does not always look like the main one. All the same, the development of parts of the zygote goes a little differently, with different speeds and features, and therefore, great differences are obtained. The face on the extra head often looks like a caricature, from this the parasitic craniopagi cause emotional rejection in others.

The most famous two-faced man

This is Edward Mordrake, heir to the English peers, one of the richest families in Britain. His fate is tragic. He cut scores with life at a very young age. He was only 23 years old when he laid hands on himself. He had an extremely rare anomaly - the second person was located on the back of the head. It is not known why, but the second person expressed emotions, directly opposite to what Edward was experiencing at the moment. So, if he cried, then the second person smiled, and vice versa. In all this there was something demonic. The most sad thing is that Edward obviously suffered from a mental disorder: he claimed that the second head whispered terrible things to him. The reason for Edward's suicide was the desire to forever get rid of the ominous whisper. In his dying letter, he begged the doctors to remove the second person. It remains to be seen whether this request was fulfilled. The tragedy of Edward inspired many writers and directors, he is dedicated to the song and thriller.

At the same time interval, the life of another conjoined twin, Pascal Pinon, came to life. He was more fortunate. While Edward Mordrake was suffering physical and mental illness, Pascal performed in a freak show and lived for 40 years.

Children known to the world for their ugliness

This is, above all, a two-headed boy from Bengal, whose skull is stored at the Royal College of Surgery of England. About his life there are documentary evidence, and this is the earliest confirmed fact of the birth and life of such a child. There are drawings depicting the boy. Both heads were the same size and had their own brain. At the junction of the heads, normal hair grew. Correctly functioned one person, normally located. The second person almost always kept a neutral expression. The child lived only 4 years - from 1783 to 1787. He died not from natural causes, but from an accident - he was bitten by a cobra.

This is a rare anomaly of development, and to date there are documentary confirmations of only 10 such cases.

In August 2008, a two-headed child was born in Bangladesh - a boy whose parents gave the name Kiron. The news of this quickly spread across the country: these children are considered to be the embodiment of a living god. Mother with the newborn had to hide from the crowd, so great was the desire of people to touch the deity. All those who came in considered it their duty to give something to the baby-some money or clothes. Kiron at birth weighed a little more than peers - more than 5 and a half kilograms. However, his development is normal, he is not sick at all.

Do deformities often occur?

So often that the study of developmental anomalies and congenital malformations is allocated to a separate science - teratology. Statistically, data in different countries differ because there are different scientific approaches. The International Classification of Diseases, Traumas and Causes of Death for Deformations, Anomalies and Chromosomal Violations is the 17th grade. According to different data, the total incidence of congenital malformations is 15%.

The complexity of the calculations is also in the fact that a physical anomaly can be detected at any age, not necessarily at birth. The diagnosis of congenital malformation over the past 40 years has become more familiar than in all past years. This is explained by the fact that the diagnosis has become more perfect, and there are those cases that could not previously be found in principle. That is, it is not known whether the deformities actually became larger or simply learned to find them well.

What else are people sick with?

People are affected not only by cancer, heart disease or seasonal colds. Changes in the radiation background, diet, industrial hazards lead to the fact that about 5 new diseases are registered each week in the world. They are described and are trying to fight them somehow. In the world there are a variety of the most rare diseases, the existence of which we have never heard.

Fortunately, smallpox, plague and cholera, or especially dangerous infections, capable of destroying the population of whole cities in a couple of days, were among the rare. Curbing these diseases is the merit of a person.

Quite often occurs child progeria or pathological aging. The child begins to grow old immediately after birth, and old age ends with death. Rare children, suffering from this disease, live to 10 years. There is also a werewolf syndrome, or whole body hair, eating inedible, or allotriphagia, vampire and blue skin syndrome. These diseases are better studied than others.