Twins

Twins, at times, can be such a rarity and such a surprise as well. Through the years there have been a number of studies on all sorts of twins. Some of these studies have proven useful, while others have proven to be outrageously deadly whether it be because of a surgery performed on conjoined (or Siamese) twins, or research and experiments conducted by a mad man. Twins have become a topic of curiosity to many scientists whether they be identical, fraternal, separated at birth, or contain an abnormality never seen before.

One Scientist, who often was called the Angel of death, had a fascination for subjects like twins that he would experiment on. Josef Mengele worked as a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and physician in Auschwitz during WWII. He would pick out subjects being unloaded from the train cars to test on and most of these subjects would be twins. His “patients” were constantly exposed to many traumas such as drug tests, castration, pressure chambers, and being frozen to death. Once one, if not both, twins passed away he would go on to dissect his victims. Despite his cruel experiments, some survivors have admitted that Mengele became a father figure to them after being separated from their families. They even described him “as a gentle, affable man who befriended them as children and gave them chocolates” (Louis Bülow). Unfortunately, no one knows why Mengele conducted these experiments, only that he had a strange fascination about twins.

A set of twins, separated at birth, were reunited in their 30’s discovered something about each other that seemed almost unreal. Even though both grew up separated and continued to be separated until there 30’s, both found that they “both suffered from tension headaches, were prone to nail biting, smoked Salem cigarettes, drove the same type of car and even vacationed at the same beach in Florida” (Lewis, Tanya). This wasn’t out of pure coincidence, it was also because of their genes, their genetic make-up. Genes aren’t only there to create how you will look, but also habits, aspects of your personality, and medical attributes/conditions. Each one specifically designed these set of twins not only to look alike but also contain many of the same interests even if they were apart for over 30 years. Nancy Segal, an evolutionary psychologist at California State University told Live Science that, “We were surprised by certain behaviors that showed a genetic influence, such as religiosity [and] social attitudes," (Lewis, Tanya).

In another study, Medical Daily announces, “A culmination of more than half a century of research collected on 14.5 million pairs of twins has finally concluded that the nature versus nurture debate is a draw” (Medical Daily). The article continues by saying that due to these results we need to view ourselves differently from the idea that we are a product of nature versus nurture because we are equally both. In a collaboration between Dr. Beben Benyamin from the Queensland Brain Institute and researchers at the VU University of Amsterdam, after viewing almost every twin study that took place in the last 50 years, they discovered that human traits and diseases are almost split equally stating, “When visiting the nature versus nurture debate, there is overwhelming evidence that both genetic and environmental factors can influence traits and diseases, … What is comforting is that, on average, about 50 percent of individual differences are genetic and 50 percent are environmental” (Medical Daily).

Works Cited:

Dovey, Dana “Nature vs. Nurture Debate: 50-Year Twin Study Proves it Takes Two to Determine Human Traits” Medical Daily. 2018 IBT Media Inc. https://www.medicaldaily.com/nature-vs-nurture-debate-50-year-twin-study-proves-it-takes-two-determine-human-334686

Lewis, Tanya. “Twins Separated at Birth Reveal Staggering Influence of Genetics” Live Science. August 11, 2018. https://www.livescience.com/47288-twin-study-importance-of-genetics.html

Louis Bülow. No Title Was Available. 2015-17. http://www.auschwitz.dk/mengele.htm