Briton expecting twins with two heads, one body

A WOMAN, pregnant with a rare form of Siamese twins, is refusing medical advice to terminate the pregnancy.

Lisa Chamberlain, 25, had a scan last week which showed her embryo had two heads and one body — making them dicephalus twins.

The staunch Catholic said doctors advised her to undergo an abortion but this was ruled out after talking over the matter with husband Mike. Ms Chamberlain, from Portsmouth, told the Sun newspaper: “My twins are a gift from God and we’re determined to give them a chance of life.”

They were diagnosed after the former RSPCA worker was taken into the city’s St Mary’s Hospital on Wednesday with back pain. She fell pregnant on December 18.

After the scan, Ms Chamberlain said doctors and nurses “kept asking each other if they were babies who were close together — or ‘something else’. The emergency obstetrician was called and took over. Some might think my twins are strange, but to me they’re special. Everything happens for a reason. Mike and I have spent seven years trying to have children and we might not get another go.”

The couple hope the babies will follow the example of US Siamese twins Abigail and Brittany Hensel. They were born in March 1990 with shared organs below the navel and are still alive.

But conjoined twins expert Professor Lewis Spitz told the Sun that he believed Mrs Chamberlain’s embryo should be terminated.

They would have a greater risk of infection, he said, and have two heads controlling one side of the body’s nervous impulses.

The last conjoined twins born in Britain died within a few weeks of each other late last year.

Faith and Hope Williams were born on November 26 and were joined from the breastbone to the top of the navel with a shared liver but separate hearts.

Hope died following surgery to separate them at the beginning of December, and Faith succumbing nearly a month later.