Aryan twins in Brazil

razib — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:47:08 +0000

Mystery of the 'Land of Twins': Something in the Water? Mengele?:

There was no evidence of the use of contraceptives or fertility drugs among the women, nor of any genetic mixing with people of African origin, who have higher twinning rates than caucasians, Dr. Matte said. But the rate of identical twins here, at 47 percent of all twin births, is far higher than the 30 percent that is expected in the general population, she found.

The part about monozygotic (identical) vs. dizygotic is strange. I knew about this village, but not the high frequency of identical twins. The between population twinning variance alluded to in that passage usually applies to dizygotic twins. The higher twinning rates of Northern Europeans than Southern Europeans, probably due to higher levels of milk consumption, are because of higher rates of fraternal births. My money is on some environmental factor. Though I would be curious about data which show that monozygotic twinning runs in families....

razib Mon, 02/23/2009 - 09:47

Tags

genetics

Mengele

Nazi

Nordic

Twins

What the hell? Isn't that Brittany Daniel?

I donno. IMO, they have to prove this up. there are probably 50,000 similarly sized villages in the world that such an occurance could be noticed. You'd expect about 50 or so to have an anomaly that was statistically significant at P<0.001.

Maybe Mengele accidentally stumbled upon some sort of epigenetic modifier that happens to increase twinning?

It's a good thing the Nazis didn't wait 10 years before trying to take over the world...

I guess the "less than" character mucks up comments. the last part of my comment above was "at P less than 0.001"

The frequency refers to fraternal, not identical twins. They corrected the article.

* * *
Correction: February 25, 2009
The CÃ¢ndido GodÃ³i Journal article on Monday, about the unexplained proliferation of twins born in the farming town of CÃ¢ndido GodÃ³i in southern Brazil, misstated the type of twins usually associated with a genetic tendency of the mother. They are fraternal twins â like a majority of those born in the town. They are not identical twins, which are generally believed to be conceived by chance.
* * *
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/world/americas/23twins.html

"Sometimes Mengele said he was a doctor who gave shots to pregnant women. Other times he was a vet who treated sick cows."

Maybe he spiked the milk?

Source:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/mystery_of_brazil_mengele_tw…