Category: News

Whew. Be sure to check out this Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about Georgia’s legislature debating a bill that would allow parents to have a choice about putting twins in the same classroom. Don’t miss the comments underneath the article for some fascinating glimpses of ignorance in the electorate. Here’s an example:

Wow. A state law for one complaining mother in one school in one county. Gotyourhandsfull is right. I’ve known many parents of mulitples who preferred to have their children split up to encourage individuality. Where’s their law? This one mandates twins be kept together if the parents want it, but there’s no provision for parents requesting separate classrooms.

A mere 40 days to handle all legislative business for the year, and this nonsense makes it to the floor. The authors of the bill and all committee members who voted to send it on up the ladder should be impeached!

Uh, guess this person misunderstood the part of the bill that states that twins and multiples should be in the same classroom “if the parent or guardian requests” it.

Kudos to Kathy Dolan for bringing clarity to that discussion.

>>>>>>

In other news, researchers from Yale and Canada’s McGill University have made a discovery that may make it possible to determine which IVF candidate embryos have the best possibility of success. This would mean that doctors would only implant one embryo at a time, obviously reducing the numbers of twin and triplet conceptions.

I love this Tallahassee Democrat story about Florida State twins, both medical students, who started a charity drive called “Share a Pair.”  They collect shoes to send to needy children around the world.

And, in other news, it turns out that Valerie Plame is a twin mom!  I cracked up reading this blog post about her defending her claim that she had not used nepotism to send her husband on assignment to Nigers.

Tyra Banks recently taped a show about conjoined twins that is expected to air February 15. These two articles, one from the Litchfield County Times and the other from Canada.com, both tell the stories of conjoined twins who participated in the taping.

Read about 7-foot twin brothers Robin and Brook Lopez, both freshmen basketball players for Stanford. There’s a Q & A where the brothers talk about each other’s strengths as ball players.

Freshmen twins Christa and Kayley French are creating “a bright future” for their Northwestern University epee team, according to an article in The Daily Northwestern.

Even better than seeing twins excel, I just love that Northwestern University was one of the few universities that was willing to recruit both young women, rather than just pick one of them.

I’m just having a hard time imagining being a mom of two girls who made it a common practice to wield sharp metal objects at each other for sport.

Twins and higher order multiples participating in all sorts of health studies is nothing new, of course. (Read all about the importance of twin studies here on BeTwinned.) But Jess and Lisa Origliasso, 22, better known in Australia as pop stars The Veronicas, have been signing up for twin studies since they were kids, according to an article in Queensland’s The Sunday Mail.

And now they will be participating in a five-year glaucoma study.

From the article:

“Being twins, we know how important it is to learn as much as possible about our genes and this particular eye study is very important,” they told The Sunday Mail.

“The findings of these studies help twins like us to be able to deal with any gene problems that may occur in our lives.”

Glaucoma is a chronic eye condition that is hard to diagnose but leads to irreversible vision damage and blindness.

It affects more than 300,000 Australians and is growing in prevalence as the population ages and diabetes becomes more common.

Megan, Molly and Moriah Frazee, all sophomores at Liberty University in Virginia, will be featured in a documentary about women in college basketball, according to an article on the Liberty Flames’ website. The show, “Pride, Passion and Power,” will air on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 21 from 2-3 p.m. EST on CBS Sports.

Apparently, the Frazees are the only set of triplets in NCAA Division I women’s basketball. The article also says they are top scorers and rebounders for the Lady Flames.

After a flurry of articles last year about whether twins should be forced to separate in school classes, the story has resurfaced in the Concord Monitor of Concord, N.H.:

In New Hampshire, 436 people have signed a petition asking for such a law, and seven lawmakers are registered to sponsor the bill. Nicknamed the “twin bill,” the exact legislation hasn’t been finalized, but sponsors said the gist is that it would direct schools to consider parents’ wishes when deciding whether to place multiples, which is the preferred term for higher-order births, in the same classroom or in separate classrooms.

More than 3,500 twins, triplets and quads attended Twins Days, the annual twins festival in Twinsburg, Ohio.

Check out this news story, and don’t forget to watch this video too.