The Wonder Twins – Six Examples of Co-Joined Twins That Calls Into Question Germ Theory and "Viruses"

Mike Stone from ViroLIEgy breaks it down...

by Mike Stone

One thing that people may not know about me is that I have a twin brother. I was the “expected” child who popped out of the oven first, and he was the surprise who came out minutes later. We were born before the widespread use of ultrasound, so my parents were left in shock and unprepared for the unexpected arrival. To make matters even more stressful for them, we were also born a few months premature, and very nearly didn't survive the experience. Fortunately, the hospital had an excellent NICU team, and we were both home with our parents and our 3-year-old brother within a little over a month. My twin and I grew up inseparable. In fact, my crib had to be moved next to my brother's as I would constantly try to climb out of mine in order to get into his. We liked the same music, shows, games, hobbies, etc. You name it, and we were pretty much in alignment with what we liked, minor a few slight differences (i.e. Superman for me, Spider-Man for him).

While we liked and shared many of the same things, one thing that we rarely shared were colds. In fact, I can only remember two instances in our lives where we were both “sick” at the same time despite always being together. Once was when we both had mild cases of what was claimed to be chickenpox (2-3 “lesions” each). The other time was in elementary school when I was home sick for a few days with a fever. My brother decided that I was living the good life, and he wanted to be living it as well. We both gave Oscar-worthy performances dialing up our “illnesses” while fudging the thermometer readings using the heat from our night lamps. We missed two full weeks of school just so we could stay home and play video games (sorry, mom 😞).

From my recollection, which I confirmed with my family, there were never any other instances where we were simultaneously sick. There were no times where one of us would have a cold, and then the other would come down with the same symptoms of disease a few days later. Even though I was regularly diagnosed with “highly contagious” strep throat throughout my childhood, both of my brothers seemed to rarely ever come down with the symptoms of disease, or if they did, it was not around the same time that I would be dealing with it or within the alotted “incubation period” afterwards. In fact, I do not recall any times where our older brother was ever sick after one of us experienced symptoms, or any times that my parents ever “caught” the same symptoms of disease from any of us. Even my grandparents, who would come over to care for us when we were not feeling well, never came down with the same illness after being around their sick grandchildren for extended periods of time. Somehow, we all seemed to be “immune” to whatever disease one member of the family was suffering from at a given time.

Regardless, my parents would try to keep us separated from each other when one of us was feeling unwell, and this reinforced the idea that disease could be passed from one kid to the other. However, this was rarely, if ever, the experience in our household. Even with the attempts to keep us separate, we were always together, and exposure to the germs would have been a given. It appeared that we had some sort of super human ability to avoid spreading our illnesses to other members of our family. Thus, the idea of “infectiousness” and “contagiousness” always felt foreign to me. Perhaps this lack of disease “spread” helped me to eventually realize the germ “theory” lies later on in my life.

I acknowledge that this is not the experience for everyone, and there are instances where it appears that disease spreads from one member of a household to another. However, I know that I am not the only one who did not regularly observe “contagion” growing up. For every person that supports the idea of “infectiousness” and “contagiousness” through personal stories of “spreading” disease to other family members, there are just as many stories where people recount how no one in their families became sick with disease while being around those who were. There are plenty of instances where we are around co-workers or in public places with people experiencing disease where we never “catch” whatever it is that they are suffering from. People seem to forget these instances and focus only on the times where they did become sick after being around someone else who was. It then becomes ingrained within their subconscious that they must have “caught” the disease, whether bacterial or “viral,” from the person to whom they were exposed to.

Given my childhood experience, where illness seemed to respect personal boundaries, I started to question the concepts of “infectiousness” and “contagiousness.” If disease can be passed from one person to another, wouldn't it have spread in my own family, especially between me and my twin brother as we were practically inseparable? Is it true that being around those who are sick will result in the same disease occurring in someone else? Can disease really be passed on from one person to another? To answer these questions, we couldn't ask for better subjects to test the hypothesis on than identical twins who are always around each other. Even better yet, studying conjoined twins who are literally inseparable would go a long way towards providing answers.

For those who may be unfamiliar, conjoined twins are those born with their bodies physically connected, a rare occurrence in about one out of every 200,000 live births. These twins are always identical and are most often fused at the chest, abdomen, or pelvis. While they have separate hearts, they often share several internal organs and a circulatory system. In most cases, separation isn’t possible, and unfortunately, many do not survive after birth. Given their close proximity and shared vital organs and bloodstream, one might expect that if one twin became ill with a bacterial or “viral” disease, the other would inevitably contract the same illness around the same time. This scenario would provide strong evidence supporting the germ “theory” of disease. But is it true that conjoined twins are destined to suffer the same “bacterial or viral disease” at the same time? Fortunately, we have accounts from surviving sets of conjoined twins whose experiences with disease may shed light on whether illness can indeed be transmitted from one person to another. Here are their stories.

Masha and Dasha

The first story is the tragic tale of Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, conjoined twins born on January 3rd, 1950, in Soviet Russia during Joseph Stalin’s regime. Shortly after the birth of the girls by caesarean section on a cold winter night, their mother was informed that her daughters had been stillborn. In reality, a false death certificate had been concocted and the twins were secretly taken by Soviet physiologist Pyotr Anokhin to be subjected to horrific experiments under the guise of scientific research. This heinous act was something that was permissible during Stalin’s rule.

For the first six years of their lives, Masha and Dasha were kept in a glass cage, locked away from the world. The cruel experiments inflicted upon them were designed to study the relationship between their shared “immune” system and their separate nervous systems. The so-called “scientists” wanted to explore the body's ability to adapt to extreme conditions, such as sleep deprivation, starvation, and drastic temperature changes. Tragically, the twins were viewed as ideal human guinea pigs for these inhumane investigations.

The girls endured starvation, electrocution, freezing, scalding, and prolonged sleep deprivation, while their blood and gastric fluids were routinely extracted. For instance, one twin would be painfully poked and prodded in order to observe what reaction would be provoked in the other twin. They were also injected with substances like radioactive iodine to observe how quickly it spread between them, with Geiger counters measuring the results. In one particularly heartless test, one twin was packed in ice to see how the other would regulate her own temperature. The experiments were so traumatizing that the girls had to mentally dissociate to survive. With no toys or normal interaction, they invented role-playing games to distract themselves from the unbearable reality of their suffering. Fortunately for the girls, once the “Stalin era” ended, the experiments were terminated.

While much of their early torturous years remains shrouded in mystery, details about Masha and Dasha's post-experiment lives can be gleaned from a few sources. In the 2015 paper A Cinematic and Physiological Puzzle: Soviet Conjoined Twins Research, Scientific Cinema and Pavlovian Physiology, Nikolai Krementsov, PhD told how, after years of enduring agonizing experiments at the Academy of Medical Sciences Pediatric Institute, the girls were sent to a boarding school in 1964. There, they were ostracized and bullied by their peers, which led them into deep depression, and they eventually turned to smoking and drinking as coping mechanisms.

In 1970, the girls ran away from the school to Moscow, where they were given a small disability pension and placed in a retirement home. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that the Russian public learned of their existence, and journalists rushed to tell their story. Although the media attention brought some improvements—such as donations that provided better housing, a new wheelchair, and financial support—it came at a cost. By 1991, the twins became tabloid targets, with sensationalized stories about their alcoholism and personal sex lives dominating headlines. There were also rumors about their father being an associate of Lavrentii Beria, Stalin’s infamous executioner, with some implying that the twins’ condition was karmic “punishment” for his actions.

Despite the media frenzy, Masha and Dasha largely refused interview requests, except from British journalist Juliet Butler, who was granted the opportunity to record the twins’ life stories. This work became the basis for their “autobiography” that was published in 2000. Butler ensured that the sisters received a portion of the royalties, which helped improve their financial situation. However, the years of physical and mental abuse had taken their toll on the girls’ health. On April 17th, 2003, Masha passed away from a heart attack. Dasha, unaware of her sister’s death, was told that Masha was simply sleeping. Sadly, Dasha was slowly poisoned by the cadaver’s toxins that had begun decomposing Masha’s body which had passed into her bloodstream. Seventeen hours later, Dasha also passed away, bringing a tragic end to the lives of the conjoined twins who had been the subject of cruel scientific fascination.

What we know with more or less certainty is this. Masha and Dasha were born by caesarean section on January 4, 1950, in a Moscow hospital, to Ekaterina and Mikhail Krivoshliapovs. The parents were told that the twins died at birth.^[43] The next seven years of their life in the Institute of Pediatrics are documented in the 1957 film. On camera, they seem happy and thriving, enjoying the attention they were getting from the scientists, nurses, teachers, and filmmakers. Yet every simple thing (such as sitting or standing) was a struggle. Doctors from the Central Institute of Orthopedics designed a special program of training and exercise to help the sisters develop necessary motor skills. It took Masha and Dasha almost two years, but, as shown in the film, by the age of seven they had learned how to walk using crutches and even to ride a tricycle—no mean feat given that each twin had a complete control of one leg, but no control of the other. Sometime in the early 1960s, the twins’ third vestigial leg (clearly visible in the film) was amputated. Along with the development of necessary motor skills, the sisters were schooled in all the subjects of a Soviet primary school curriculum (reading, writing, math, etc.).

Then, suddenly, their life at the Institute of Pediatrics came to an end. In 1964 Masha and Dasha were sent to a special boarding school for disabled children in Novocherkask (the very city where Anokhin had begun his career as a Bolshevik).^[44] According to the twins’ recollections, recorded some thirty years later, the school turned out to be a living hell. Their classmates shunned and bullied them. Masha and Dasha took up drinking and smoking (Masha preferred the latter, Dasha the former). With the help of Nadezhda Gorokhova, a physical therapy nurse who had cared for them at the Institute of Orthopedics, they “ran away” from the school and came to Moscow in 1970. For a year they stayed with the nurse. Finally, after overcoming numerous bureaucratic hurdles (one of which was getting two separate passports), the sisters were given a very small disability pension (sixty rubles a month for both of them) and placed in a “retirement home” on the outskirts of Moscow. Even though some individuals, including Anokhin, tried to help Masha and Dasha adjust to their “independent” life, the sisters largely kept to themselves to avoid the morbid curiosity and sordid proposals of nosy strangers. Alcohol became their constant companion, a not very fulfilling escape from the poverty, loneliness, emptiness, and sadness of life.

In the late 1980s, in the heyday of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost’, the Soviet public finally learned about the twins’ existence. A group of journalists, including Irina Krasnopol’skaia, a science correspondent of the popular daily Moscow Truth, Vladislav Listyev, the producer and anchor of the most popular “perestroika” TV program “Glance” (Vzgliad),^[45] and Valerii Golubtsov, a correspondent of the Soviet News Agency (APN), reported on Masha and Dasha’s dismal existence and appealed to the public for help.^[46] The appeal bore some fruit, helped the twins obtain better housing and financial assistance. A special bank account was set up for cash donations.^[47] Several individuals provided household items and clothing. A certain “Mr. Maier” brought the sisters a specially designed wheelchair.^[48]

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the rapidly “yellowing” Russian press made Masha and Dasha notorious. Tabloids had a field day with the stories of the twins’ alcoholism and sex life and alleged that their father had worked as a personal driver of Lavrentii Beria, Stalin’s most infamous executioner, implying that the sisters’ birth had been “proper punishment” for Beria’s associate. The highlight of their life in the early 1990s was a short visit to Germany. The sisters were deeply impressed: they stayed in an ordinary hotel, ate at ordinary restaurants, went everywhere they wanted. Nobody stared at them! They were treated as “ordinary persons.”^[49] Back in Russia, Dasha fell into deep depression, which she fought with the familiar medicine—alcohol.^[50] Journalists kept pestering the twins with requests for interviews, but for the most part the sisters refused. They made an exception to Juliet Butler, a British journalist stationed in Moscow, who recorded Masha’s and Dasha’s recollections of their life. These recordings provided the foundation for the sisters’ “autobiography” written by Butler and published in early 2000 in German and Japanese.^[51] Butler arranged for the sisters to get a portion of the royalties from the sale of the book. In October 2000, she was instrumental in getting Masha and Dasha featured in a special episode devoted to conjoined twins on the BBC2 documentary series Horizon.^[52] Their financial situation improved, but it did little to break the vicious circle of loneliness, isolation, and heavy drinking. The sisters’ health began to deteriorate. In April 2003, Masha died of a cardiac infarction. Seventeen hours later, Dasha followed.^[53] At the time of their death, Masha and Dasha were said to be the oldest living conjoined twins in the world.

Why bring up such a heartbreaking tale of two tortured souls? The twins were considered a biological marvel, with each girl having her own lungs, heart, stomach, kidneys and small intestine, while sharing a large intestine and bladder. A third leg, which consisted of two fused legs with nine toes, was eventually amputated, leaving the girls troubled and enormously self-conscious until they eventually learned how to move around with the aid of crutches. The girls were linked together not just in an obviously physical manner, but also in other ways as well. According to a 2021 story in Russia Beyond, they “shared identical dreams; when one drank, the other got drunk and when one ate her fill, the other also felt full; when one was receiving dental treatment, the other felt pain and nausea as the anesthetic wore off; when one began to think of something, the other would continue the thought.” In other words, the girls were bound together in numerous profound ways.

However, there was one suprising way in which the girls were not seemingly connected. When one twin was suffering from a disease claimed to be bacterial or “viral,” the other twin would remain completely healthy. This was demonstrated by an experiment performed when the girls were just three years of age. At this time, they were held in ice for a long period. One of the twins ultimately came down with the symptoms of pneumonia with her body temperature reaching 40°C. Interestingly, the other twin had no symptoms whatsoever, and her temperature did not rise above 37°C. Since the girls circulatory systems were interconnected, they shared the same blood, meaning any bacterium or “virus” that would enter one twin’s bloodstream would also be present in the other twin as well. Yet, the girls never shared disease such as the flu, colds, and other childhood diseases as these were all experienced separately. Even the “highly contagious” measles “virus” proved ineffective as one twin came down with the symptoms of measles while the other did not.

The explanation given for why one of the twins could remain healthy while the other was dealing with a “pathogen” was that they had separate nervous systems. However, the nervous system is not typically understood to play a direct role in determining whether “pathogens” like bacteria or “viruses” affect individuals differently—especially when those pathogens are circulating in a shared bloodstream. According to the conventional understanding of “infectious” disease, if a pathogen is present in the bloodstream, both individuals sharing that circulatory system would be exposed to the same pathogen and, theoretically, should succumb to the same disease around the same time. While their separate nervous systems might influence how their bodies respond to stress or other factors, it would not prevent exposure to blood-borne pathogens or any resulting illness. Therefore, the fact that the twins did not get sick at the same time suggests that, even when two individuals are exposed to the same internal environment (such as the bloodstream), they may respond differently, indicating that the mere presence of a “pathogen” is not sufficient to cause illness. This story highlights the importance of environmental factors and psychosomatic components in the development of disease, and drives a dagger into the heart of the germ “theory.” While the experiences of Masha and Dasha are powerful evidence contradicting the prevalent paradigm, their story isn't the only one.

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