I realize you may not think this is as interesting as I do. I have cut and pasted and editorialized. Sorry for the length but to me it is fascinating and causes a lot of questions.
For many Christians everything is black or white. But are they?
A while back I was listening to an interview on the radio, the subject was chimerism. The individual being interviewed was Karen Keegan who discovered her chimera-ness at age 52. When she needed a kidney transplant, she and her two adult children underwent DNA testing to figure out which kid's kidney would be the best match for mom. Surprisingly, the tests showed neither. In fact, according to DNA, Keegan's children weren't her children at all. The case confounded doctors for more than two years until, in 2000, the docs finally realized that Keegan's blood cells carried different genes from the cells in her ovaries---the long-absorbed twin was found. Does this mean Karen has two souls?
Then there is Lydia Fairchild who with her children are the subjects of a British documentary called The Twin Inside Me (also known as "I Am My Own Twin").
Lydia Fairchild was pregnant with her third child when she and the father of her children, Jamie Townsend, separated. When she applied for welfare support in 2002, she was requested to provide DNA evidence that Townsend was the father of her children. While the results showed Townsend was the father of the children, the DNA tests indicated that she was not their mother.
This resulted in Fairchild's being taken to court for fraud for claiming benefit for other people's children or taking part in a surrogacy scam. Hospital records of her prior births were disregarded. Prosecutors called for her two children to be taken into care. As time came for her to give birth to her third child, the judge ordered a witness be present at the birth. This witness was to ensure that blood samples were immediately taken from both the child and Fairchild. Two weeks later, DNA tests indicated that she was not the mother of that child either.
A breakthrough came when a lawyer for the prosecution found an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about a similar case involving Karen Keegan that had happened in Boston. He realized that Fairchild's case might also be caused by chimerism. Fairchild's prosecutors suggested this possibility to her lawyers, who arranged further testing. As in Keegan's case, DNA samples were taken from members of the extended family. The DNA of Fairchild's children matched that of Fairchild's mother to the extent expected of a grandmother. They also found that, although the DNA in Fairchild's skin and hair did not match her children's, the DNA from a cervical smear test did match. Fairchild was carrying two different sets of DNA, the defining characteristic of a chimera.
Chimeras can incorporate twins of different sexes with much stranger results. In 1998, Scottish doctors reported treating a teenage boy for an undescended testicle. But when they put the kid under the knife, no second testicle could be found to pull down. Instead doctors discovered an ovary and fallopian tube.
The existence of chimerism is problematic for DNA testing since it results in one individual having at least two sets of DNA. Chimerism is thought to affect homosexuality and transgender identity. Male cells outgrow female cells in this condition; the majority of male/female chimeras should be phenotypically male. Since the majority of any organ tends to be made from one embryo or the other, while a mixed-sex brain could occur in any proportion, generally the brain would be primarily male or female.
Is it possible that at least some homosexuals and transgenders are born the way they are like heterosexuals?
Individuals opposed to abortion claim "life begins at conception." But does it? At what point does the soul attach?
The there is the case in 2002, a 40-year old male school teacher began to view child pornography websites, and soliciting prostitutes at massage parlors, activities which there are no accounts of him having done in the past. The man's wife turned him into the police when he was found making subtle sexual advances towards young children.
He was found guilty of child molestation and medicated for pedophilia. He was given an ultimatum; he could either pass a 12-step Sexaholics Anonymous rehabilitation program or face jail time. He chose the former but was expelled after asking the ladies in the program for sex.
The evening before his prison sentencing, he took himself to a hospital, complaining that he had a massive headache and would "rape his landlady." An MRI revealed an egg-sized brain tumor located in the right lobe of the orbifrontal cortex, which is tied to judgment, impulse control and social behavior.
Once the tumor was removed, his sex-obsession disappeared.
After he was remanded to psychiatric care, he complained of balance problems and a MRI scan revealed an egg-sized brain tumor. Further tests found the man was also unable to write or copy drawings and was unconcerned when he urinated on himself.
But seven months after the tumor was removed, and after successfully completing the Sexaholics Anonymous program, the man returned home. In October 2001 he complained of headaches and secretly collected pornography once more. But after a MRI scan revealed tumor regrowth and it was removed, the behavior again disappeared.
How many people are in prison for doing something that due to the condition of their brain they could not control? How would we like being put in prison for doing something we could not control? I hear a lot of folks that sin and crime are just a matter of making the right choices. But are they?
Not everything is as it first appears.
"I have always told you some version of the truth."
Jack Nicholson "Something's Gotta Give"
