Canadian Irish conjoined twins likely share the same mind

@katiemac: How is it demeaning and dehumanizing that the doctor is saying these children are a new form of life? It's just a statement and it's not meaning to be degrading. The fact is that these children are simply unlike the norm. We don't walk around everyday and see kids like them, so I don't understand why it is so terrible that the doctor simply made a truthful observation.

Please see today's NY Times Sunday magazine section for full story about these little girls. This article was taken directly from that.

Thanks, IrishCentral for correcting your stupid initial error of printing the name "Brenda" as one of these children's parents. But why don't you have the professionalism to correct all your errors? I guess it would take all day.

You know, this story is so heart-breaking that I think it needs a little quiet laugh to lighten it a bit. May I offer one? The so-called original Siamese twins, brothers Chang and Eng, born in Siam (duh!), were conjoined by a breast bone and a ligament about four inches long between their chests. Otherwise, they were completely individual, normal human beings, unlike these little girls with one brain. They were recruited into the ‘Freak Circuses’ of their day (1830's), travelled the world over, lived long and became very wealthy. They married (two un-conjoined sisters actually) and had many children; ten each as far as I can remember the story (have fun working out the familial relationship of them all to each other - brother, sister, half-brother etc, cousin, aunt, uncle etc). They built houses near to each other so that - when the times came for one to spend the night with his wife and family - they wouldn’t have far to go together. So they swapped living in each other’s houses on certain nights of the week but due to their chest constraint, it was always a case of three-in-the-bed. We all know the childhood song > #There was three in the bed and the little one said... Roll over, roll over... So they all rolled over and......# > Well, we all know the rest of the song line... but in their case it was> # they all rolled over and... two fell out #.

The parents of these young girls should perhaps be introduced to Abby and Brittany Hensel and their parents and school friends and get a feel for their baby girls future lives.

Georgieboy - you should have gone to Specsavers. The article says Brendan Hogan, not Brenda. Are you feeling sheepish now, George?

Georgie boy if you had another brain you would have one and that one is on the blink.

Snugfuul: Of course they have a father, you dope. Don't you know basic biology? The question is why is he not involved. I never suggested that the fat woman in the pic was their mother. And it's you who are the illiterate, since the column speaks of "their parents, Felicia Simms and Brenda Hogan". Is one of those their father? Idiot.

@GeorgeDillon That's the mother and grandmother in the picture. Also, the article says they have a father. Try reading sometime. :)

Yet another birth to an Irish woman and her lesbian partner without the iput of a man. Seems Ireland has the highest rate of lesbianism in the world? Of course the children are entirely innocent, and I wish them good health and a happy life, be it together or separately. Raises some questions about sperm donation and in vitro, though.

"From the very beginning, doctors noticed something strange about the girls". Gee - you think...?

@katiemac - No it's not the same as other conjoined twins...their brains are connected physically and they share a mind. It's a new discovery.

I agree that this is not a "new life form". How ridiculous is that! I pray for a solution to their difficulty.

The only thing that matters is that the children do not suffer, now, or in the future. If they can have comfortable lives they will be O.K. I pray that they will.