The Limits of Individuality: Ritual and Sacrifice in the Lives and Medical Treatment of Conjoined Twins

Alice Domurat Dreger, in Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 29c, no. 1 [March 1998], pp. 1-29.

In 1996, Cheryl Chase asked me: How much of the treatment of intersex arises out of anxiety about sex, and how much arises out of anxiety about abnormality?

I wasn’t sure, so I tried to do a comparative study by looking at the treatment of conjoined twinning. This article was a result of that study. So many people expressed interest in this article that I ended up writing a book about this topic, One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal.

And what was the answer to Cheryl’s question? Little did I realize how much of the treatment of conjoined twinning comes from anxiety about sex! (See One of Us for an explanation.)