DailyDirt: Misplaced Hearts…
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
If you haven’t planned a romantic Valentine’s Day yet, you still have a bit of time left. But if you’re not at all interested in this pink and red commercial holiday, then just think about the discounted chocolates you can snag on the 15th. Don’t just sit home alone, though, check out these links and appreciate that, in the grand scheme of things, almost anything that’s possible has a chance of happening — and try to stay romantic somehow.
- In 1788, medical students in London discovered a cadaver that was the mirror image of a normal person. All of the dead man’s organs were flipped left to right, so his heart was in the right side of his chest. The condition is called situs inversus and is estimated to occur in about 1 or 2 out of 20,000 people. [url]
- Not too long ago, a 64yo Indian man was discovered with situs inversus and two livers. Healthy people with this condition seem to find out after they have an operation and doctors are surprised by unusual organ locations — but you’d think that at least once or twice in a person’s life when someone asks to “place your hand over your heart” that these people would be doing the opposite of everyone else. [url]
- NBA player Randy Foye has situs inversus, so if you see him during the national anthem with his hand over his right chest, he’s not protesting anything. Apparently, Donny Osmond also has this condition, and it’s a not-so-uncommon trope for having a fictional character survive a gunshot wound to the chest. [url]
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Filed Under: anatomy, biology, bizarre, donny osmond, hearts, organs, randy foye, situs inversus, valentine's day
Comments on “DailyDirt: Misplaced Hearts…”
1 in 10,000?!? That doesn’t sound that rare…. Winning the lottery is less probable and I hear about people winning all the time.
Re: I hear about people winning all the time.
What you “hear about” is what’s newsworthy, not what’s rare.
How many extra copies would a newspaper headline like “MAN’S INTERNAL ORGANS REVERSED” sell, do you think?
Re: Re:
1 in 10,000?!? That doesn’t sound that rare….
That means there are something like 32,000 cases in the US, and 750,000 worldwide.
I thought it was far rarer than that, and didn’t know it was called situs inversus. Some people are born with prehensile tails. Have known a few, but never knew anyone that had situs inversus.
Re: Re:
Some people are born with prehensile tails.
I knew that some infants are born with vestigial tails but not prehensile tails. Citation, please.
Obligatory Joke
Upon hearing that he had two livers the man started drinking heavily.