Brazilian Twin Mystery the Result of Nazi Experiment? 14
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the boys-from-brazil dept.
from the boys-from-brazil dept.
The small Brazilian town of Candido Godol is noteworthy for its large German population and remarkable for its twin birth rate. The town has approximately 80 families and 44 sets of twins, a rate that is 1000% higher than normal. Many theories have sprung up over the years to account for the anomaly. National Geographic explores one of the latest and perhaps the most disturbing, the possibility that the twins are a result of an experiment conducted by Nazi scientist Joseph Mengele.
Re: (Score:2)
it's a haircut, or lack-thereof. joking aside this is fascinating. The twinning rate for normal pregnancies (non injected or extra-hormone pumped ones) is pretty low, what 2%? and there's few things that will influence this. they could be chugging hormones.
Re: (Score:2)
My first thought was that this may just be at the extremely long end of the tail, but then I looked into a little more and it seems that this are has a very large degree of genetic inbreeding.
Re: (Score:1)
'genetic inbreeding' Is there any other kind?
Typo (Score:2, Insightful)
Founder effect, anybody? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
only 1000%? (Score:2)
That's a fancy book-learned way of saying 10 times as many as normal.
Which seems to fit nicely in a tail of a normal distribution for a very large set of numbers.
A mysterious nazi mad scientist with mid-21st century medical science technology seems unnecessary.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, no, it's 11 times as many as normal.
"100% higher than normal" = 2 times as many as normal.
"1000% higher than normal" = 11 times as many as normal.
it could be environmental (Score:2)
There can be other things that can cause multiple offspring in a pregnancy. Subtle hormonal changes (or drastic changes like what happens with fertility treatments) can cause multiple ova (eggs) per term.
It would be interesting to see if there is a statistical difference in the age of onset of menopause or other reproductive changes.