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Aug 18, 2009 01:50 PM | 9
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A woman in Tunisia is said to be pregnant with six boys and six girls, The Sun reported yesterday.
If the woman, a teacher in her 30s who was not named in the newspaper, successfully delivers all 12 infants, as she has vowed to do, she would be going against medical advice and shattering the world record for multiple births.
"In the beginning we thought that my wife would give birth to twins," the father, identified as Marwan, told the paper, "But more fetuses were discovered. Our joy increased with the growing number."
After suffering previous miscarriages, the woman reportedly turned to fertility treatments, which are known to increase the probability of multiple births. However, it is highly unlikely that all the babies will make it to term, experts say.
"When you get to a pregnancy with that many multiples, often some of them spontaneously die," Manny Alvarez of FOXNews.com said, "Anything more than five babies becomes a very high-risk pregnancy."
The current record for multiple births is the octomom, Nadya Suleman, of the Los Angeles suburb of Bellflower, who gave birth in January. Read our Ask the Experts to find out why multiple births are so rare in humans.
UPDATE (8/19/09): A British newspaper has discredited the dodeca-mom story. Read our update here.
Image of pregnant woman courtesy mahalie via Flickr
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9 Comments
Add CommentThe chances that all will be born alive and healthy are near zero.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a sad story - not a joyous one.
It seems that the number of babies is inversely related to the IQ of the parents....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"If the woman, A TEACHER in her 30s who was not named in the newspaper, successfully delivers all 12 infants, as she has vowed to do, she would be going against medical advice and shattering the world record for multiple births"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishow does being a teacher mean you have a lower IQ?
you are basing your conclusion off of a single instance as far as i can tell (octomom).
Lets do some simple math. To be able to live those babies need to be 500 grams or one pound each. Or better yet 1 kg or 2 pounds. Times 12 that makes 6 to 12 kg or 12 to 24 pounds. That's quite a lot of carry at the end of pregnancy and that does not include the amniotic water or any of those placentas. So I too would predict that this story will have more or less sad ending. And then one needs to feed all those babies that survive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is tabloid material... Why are we reading this here?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSciAm is becoming a tabloid, just scan recent article headlines.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFYI - this article, the dodeca-mom has been reported as a hoax.
The woman is not even pregnant.
So much for verification.
If the report is true, multiple births appear to be getting out of hand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre humans becoming more like rodents?
Is that what scientists really want?
thats some Franken sperm, 12 BABIES!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSperm has nothing to do with MAKING babies. a guy produces sperm by the millions, but the woman is born with all the eggs she's ever going to have, so her body metes them out monthly, strategically. It's highly unlikely a woman would ever voluntarily put out twelve eggs at once, and this woman didn't even use drugs to get the eggs. Identicals could be produced from one egg, but not that many and not of different sexes. She's a lying show-biz slut.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this