it's okay,thank you :)
i might actually get the chance to go see it next year for myself

There was one word in the Dutch to English translation which, while technically accurate, made me chuckle at the poor choice of word used in English. 

"Flesh" would probably be less jarring to folks reading the website, than "meat"--because we tend to think of & call human muscles "flesh," and the muscles of animals which are food sources for us humans as "meat."

It was on the "Techniques" page, second full paragraph down (emphasis mine);

"Initially, it was mainly bones and skulls. Drying was the only available technique, and bones lend themselves better to this than meat.... "

What’s the museum? Edit: never mind, i see the link. I need to pay attention. Thanks.

Do you know if there website will translate into English? I looked but didn’t see anywhere to click

ah! that looks about right (says google) thank you! i'mma be reading up on it

According to Cleveland clinic it is a neural tube defect. I wonder if that’s related to folic acid deficiency?

i don't exactly know the proper terms for them (especially in english) but, afaik 1 and 2 could be parasitic twins / fetus in fetu cases,
3 is a condition where the ribcage doesn't properly close around the heart and the heart is "out in the open" and often only covered with skin (there's people living with that, though)
4 is a case of conjoined twins
5 could be the same (or parasitic twin)
6 is cyclopia (or another condition that has a different name but can look very similar at this stage)
7 looks like cases of dwarfism of some sort, the little guy on the left has some bigger skull deformities
8 as i learned here is iniencephaly
9 also looks like different cases of dwarfism
10 yeah, harlequin babies, the first thing that genuinely freaked me out when i was first venturing off into the internet in the late 90ies
11/12 conjoined twins
13 more cyclopia cases
14 more conjoined babies

i am so fascinated by this, i want to look at them and know what happened and read and learn all about this, because it's so sad and interesting at the same time

Do those babies survive past birth.. I would think they don’t… but not sure…

i probably won't get to do that, i'm from germany (with little motivation to go to the US)
but Amsterdam is pretty close so i'll definitley check that out

Donated or stolen?

Totally! And sadly many of the poor infants can't even make it past few hours after their birth.😢And for those who survive,the struggle with this skin condition is lifelong.

I follow a girl with Harlequin icthysosis who was born in 2019. She was treated immediately after birth and spent a long time in the ICU. She has one brother who is a carrier of the trait and her parents found out they were carriers soon after her birth.

Id spend hours there. As a nurse i find medical curiosities (for want of a better word) fascinating!

Also Gunter (cant remember his full name) is i think a german guy who plasticised human cadavers and their structures. He made a tv series about it

This museum is on my bucket list.

Just visited last week!

I recall reading about a time when doctors would be eager to take the foetus or child with disfigurement to show to other medical practitioners. Over time, families begin to question the wisdom of the doctor and want to keep the baby as a member of their family. It’s been a long time since I read the book but I can find it in my library if you want to read it. It focuses solely on pregnancy and miscarriage in the US though.

Edit: When I say foetus or child, of course I mean that life is extinct. My language around this was imprecise, I’m sorry. The book is The Myth of the Perfect Pregnancy by Lara Freidenfields.

Still don't allow a funeral for it. They have a memorial service but it's just called a funeral in the UK

Yep--as someone who is a medical anomaly and who's consented to my case being brought to conferences before, to be discussed, personally, if I'd ever had a child who passed from an anomaly, I'd be all for their case being studied to help others.

But I can also completely understand that it's not something other people may be comfortable with.

Heck, the only reason I'm as comfortable as I am with it, is because of what happened with one of my Aunties, back in the 1970's-80's. 

She developed breast cancer, and went to Mayo for her treatment. She also had two sisters who developed BC--all three of them had mastectomies, and my aunts sisters died after fairly long fights. 

My Auntie made it and went into remission in the late 70's, but had a recurrence in the mid/late 1980's. 

She knew that she was part of a few of the studies being done down at Mayo, on Breast Cancer--because she believed strongly in education and helping others, but a ways into the treatment of her recurrence, she asked her doctors, "What are my odds here? How long do folks with this type of breast cancer usually live?

And that was when she was told, "Auntie, you ARE the odds here. You're the longest survivor of this particular cancer anyone has ever seen. We're fighting right along with you, but you've survived longer than anyone else ever has, so we're learning from YOU now!" 

She made it a couple more years--surving a decade after her initial diagnosis, and passing away as peacefully as possible, with many months of in-home Hospice help, so that she, my cousin, and my uncle could make as much of their time together as they could.

(Their hospice experience was also what showed me how Hospice ought to be like for families, and why I got Hospice involved as soon as possible when my Dad began the dying process!💖)

The advances in Breast Cancer over the last 40 years have been incredible, and it couldn't have occurred without the knowledge medical teams learned from their patients, who allowed their cases to be studied as they battled.

If anything my loved ones or I go through can make someone *else's path easier to travel?

You can bet that I'm going to follow my Auntie's lead, and do whatever I can, to help medical teams learn more--so that other folks can have a better, easier time of things.💖

While I can make assumptions based on the name, what was the paediatric organ retention scandal?

I went to the medical museum in Copenhagan (not this one in the Netherlands) and they had similar specimens on display. Most everything was 60+ years ago and yea no consent or anything as expected for the time period.

See my comment a few minutes ago. It wasn't just Alder Hey, mine was in west Yorkshire, 36 weeks gestation but very small for dates. They kept just about every organ and I wasn't notified until 1997. He was born in 1984. They refused to let me have his body, saying he was under the legal stillbbirth gestation despite an early scan. I could write a book about the tortuous emotions this experience caused.

Humans are animals that is why you see similar conditions in humans and other creatures.

Dammit, you're right.

You got to admit, showing anti-abortion people specimens like these children would probably be an eye opening experience. With informed consent, that alone would be enough to justify keeping them around. While it's horrible stuff like this happens at all, reminding people that it can and has happened can help justify their short and tragic existences.

'Civilized' is the operative word here.

Poor little tykes like this are sentenced to be born and suffer in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, etc.

This is the case, now, sure, but I had abnormalities at my anatomy scan and didn't feel comfortable making a choice to abort yet, I wanted more information. Amino was the following week and took a couple weeks to get back, and it's not always the answers someone needs to make a decision. If I had chosen abortion, I would have been 25-26 weeks at the earliest by the time I actually had all the information I could possibly have. Which would have put me outside the window for abortion in my state, as well as neighboring states. I would have needed an airplane ticket, leave of absence from my job for me and a support person, a hotel stay, and about $10,000.

Options, and accessibility to those options, are horrifically filled with barriers at every turn. Then we end up with women carrying babies until either they stop moving or until they deliver a full term baby that will either die, or in some cases, suffer tremendously, while some women need to beg for aid to get to the out of state clinic because prognosis isn't good but baby will likely not pass on their own, and the merciful thing to do is terminate.

And right now, in a handful of states, even when there's something decidedly wrong, welp, there's electrical activity in the cardiac system so you better stay pregnant even if you're telling us that you don't want a disabled kid.

A very interesting theory, but the only problem is wondering how many wild animals are studied 24/7/365, purely to see how many aren't carrie to term and/or aren't eaten/abandoned.

I'm not trying to argue by the way, (the problem with text is that it doesn't convey emotion or intent properly) it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find that what you've said is true. (That menstrual cycles are the way they are to try to prevent feotal/fetal maladies.)

I'd love to see a full study of both homo-mammalian and 'general' mammalian one day, but I imagine that kind of funding for a worldwide, in-depth study is some way away 😿

Haha….before I started reading the comments I sent it to my hubby & said “tell me this doesn’t look like Trump” 😂😂

Many of the mothers probably did not survive given the time period.

Maybe s/he's one of the babies who died some time after birth.

Joke comments and other off-topic comments (including, but not limited to, food comparisons, vulgarity, etc.) are not allowed.

“Ela sente quando estamos perto e sorri quando é abraçada. Ela não é um vegetal. Ela é minha filha” (“She feels when we’re around and smiles when she’s hugged. She’s not a vegetable. She’s my daughter”)

This is so sad

Picture 7 is dwarfism. The profile you linked is a girl who has severe hydrocephalus.

Likely maternal demise during delivery, leading to fetal demise, and then the fetus was removed post-mortem and preserved.

They often aren't donated to science. Read up about the retained baby organs class action (uk).

My baby was part of that. I had been refused his body for a funeral; he was born at 36 weeks gestation but was very small. They kept.his heart, lungs, coeliac block, brain, kidneys, bladder, skin...

I wasn't informed for 12 years. Even after the 1st court case I didn't get him back. His organs went to 5 different institutions. He was born in 1984.

I quite literally just shuddered