There are many siblings around the world who would say, if pressed, that they would go to any length to help a brother or sister in need.
These Serbian twins really pushed that sibling love to the limit, though, when one of them was born with no testicles and the other had two.
The testicle-less one wanted to father his own children one day, and so the two-testicled twin offered to give one up for the cause. And since they’re identical twins, the DNA each passes onto their children would have been exact matches, anyway.
The twins were 36 years old when they underwent the 6-hour operation, which involved connecting two arteries and veins – each less than 2mm wide – in a 4 hour window. If the operation took longer, the organ would have died from lack of blood supply.
The operation was a success, and only the third of its kind to ever be completed. Both patients are reported to be in good health after recovering.
Image Credit: Pixabay
Two of the surgeons on this case, Dr. Dicken Ko and Dr. Branko Bojovic, were also involved in the U.S.’ first penis transplant, done on a man who lost his organ to cancer, but he opted not to use donated testicles, since any children fathered would be the genetic children of the donor, not the recipient.
Jeffrey Kahn, of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, expanded for The Verge.
“If you were to transplant testicles, that would effectively be making the donor not only a donor of body parts, but also a donor of sperm. It’s effectively a sperm donation without consent – and that shouldn’t happen.”
In this case, though, the donor twin was happy to donate not only his testicle, but the genetic material contained within. They are twins, after all.
Image Credit: Pixabay
Fun fact: This is one of the only cases when an organ recipient wouldn’t need to take immunosuppressants, since their genetic material is exactly the same, and so wouldn’t likely be rejected by the body.
There are other issues at play that may affect the newly-testicled twin’s ability to reproduce normally, but I’m sure if they’re all worked out and he manages to impregnate a woman, the scientific community will let us know about it!
Because honestly, it’s really stinking cool.
