When they were born, Abigail and Brittany Hensel's parents were told that they probably would not survive more than a few hours. Their case is rare. Twins have two hearts, two lungs, two stomachs and two separate brains. However, they are born with dicephalic parapagus. This means they were born with two heads but only one body. From the waist down, they share every organ. Brittany controls the left side of their body, while Abigail controls the right. The University of Maryland Medical Center reports that “Siamese twins occur once in 200,000 births.” In order to understand the life of the Siamese, one must first understand how this phenomenon occurs, the separation procedures and the ethical questions that arise from it. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay First of all, it is important to understand how conjoined twins occur. According to the Encyclopedia of Diseases and Disorders, conjoined twins are identical twins whose two embryos have not completely separated before the baby is born. This disorder results from the inability of embryos to divide after the twelfth day of fetal development. When a fertilized human egg manages to divide before the twelfth day, the twins will be born separately. The longer the embryos take to divide, the more complicated the interconnection of the infant's body will be. The University of Maryland Medical Center states that "about 40 to 60 percent of Siamese conjoined babies are born stillborn, and about 35 percent survive only one day." The overall survival rate for Siamese is between 5 and 25%. Female siblings appear to have better chances of survival than their male counterparts: women are three times more likely than men to be born alive. About 70% of all Siamese are girls. Second, in most cases, the separation surgery will take place once the twins are 4 months old. Waiting gives the infant's body a chance to grow. This makes surgery easier for doctors and easier to perform surgery on the infant's body. According to the American Pediatric Surgical Association. only about 250 separation operations were successful, meaning at least one twin survived for a long time. There are several different categories of Siamese, which means that each separation procedure is different. According to Medscape, a leading medical resource for doctors, medical students, nurses and other healthcare professionals, 74% of conjoined twins are connected at the chest, abdomen, or both. In order to separate the twins joined at the torso, the surgeon first pierces the skin, then must carefully split the organs and give enough organs to both bodies, being careful to avoid major arteries and veins. The cut organs are then sewn back together and placed back into the individual bodies before the skin itself is sewn back together. Finally, whether twins are successfully separated depends on the number of organs or how much of an organ they share. Many ethical complications can arise from separation or the decision not to separate. The decision to separate the Siamese twins would be made easier if the survival of both individuals was guaranteed, but this is not always possible. In some cases, separation would result in serious health risks for one or both twins. An example of this occurred in two-year-old twins connected at the head. The girls, unnamed, shared their kidneys and the veins that regulate blood in their brains. He was very little..