From Mark Bailey
Alison Motluk reports in the box “When does life begin?” in the discussion of abortion that there is a question over whether a “soul” assigned at fertilisation might have to be split in the case of identical twins (18 March, p 8).
It gets even more interesting than that, in the case where two separate fertilisations that would normally become fraternal twins instead fuse to produce just one embryo, leading to chimerism in the adult. Here you must perforce have two “souls” inhabiting one individual.
I’d like to see the governor of South Dakota sort that one out, and I’m not sure what the Pope would think of it either.
Didcot, Oxfordshire, UK
