THURSDAY isn't always my favourite day of the week. But in TV terms it was the best this time.

I HOPE parents-to-be weren't watching Discovery Channel last night. Because if I was, I'll be damn freak out! Serius cakap...

There was this documentary called The Boy Who Gave Birth To His Twin. Alamjan Nematilaev, a seven-year-old boy from Kazakhstan, was the star of the show. For seven years the little boy had a large stomach, like a pregnant woman.

Finally his mother took him to the doctors and surgeons removed what they thought was a huge cyst.

On closer inspection they found hair and limbs inside the sac. Doctors found that growing inside Alamjan was his own twin, a condition known as foetus in fetu, literally meaning 'a baby inside a baby'. It showed the foetus in detail, which was uncomfortable but compelling viewing.

For seven years a deformed foetus was growing and acting like a parasite in the boy's body.

The Kazakhstani doctors were baffled and an American pathologist was flown over to decide if it was a cancerous tumour which however unlikely, could grow hair and teeth.

Alamjan was healthy - and it was no tumour but Alamjan's twin inside the sac. Early in his mother's pregnancy the twin had not developed properly. It had no heart or brain, just stunted arms, legs, a barely formed face and masses of hair. It had become entangled in Alamjan when he was a developing foetus and attached itself to his blood supply, living as a parasite.

It was technically a baby, but could not survive outside its host.

GOSH! It must be quite something to discover you've been walking around all your life with your twin inside you. A strange feeling no doubt. Can we really think of Alamjan's twin as just that, a twin? Technically the answer is yes. A foetus in foetu, or baby within a baby, is a developmental hiccup that happens very rarely to identical twins. But the mistake comes so early in development that the twin inside never really had any chance of being a real live twin. Here we take a look at the pitfalls of embryonic development and reveal just what a rocky road it can be.

Another outstanding documentary by CH50 whose programmes just continue to get better and better. Well, not advisable tea time viewing, but a fascinating take on human science. Anyone catched the documentary on Ladan & Laleh Bijani in Dying To Be Apart?

Sob, sob...

Posted by Wan Mohd Fahimi @ 3:31 PM