WHAT A PERPLEXING>>>>>>>>>>
MYSTERY



Doctors try to save China's first "mermaid" baby
Latest Updated by 2006-11-23 09:07:42

A doctor makes a medical check-up for a baby who was born with her legs joined together at the Children's Hospital in south China's Hunan Province Nov. 21, 2006. (Xinhua Photo)

With round-the-clock care from doctors and nurses, a baby born with a rare congenital defect known as sirenomelia, or "mermaid syndrome", is still alive 2 weeks after being found abandoned outside a children's hospital in central China's Hunan Province.

The baby, 21 centimeters long and weighing 2.45 kg, is in a stable condition, said Xu Zhiyue, head of the intensive care department of the Hunan Provincial Children's Hospital, based in the provincial capital Changsha.

Ultrasonic tests show the baby is a boy.

Doctors were keeping the baby alive via peritoneal dialysis, said Xu. Peritoneal dialysis is a treatment for people suffering kidney failure. It does the work that healthy kidneys normally do, cleaning the blood and removing waste and excess water from the body.

The baby was found in front of the hospital gate, apparently abandoned by its parents, and admitted to the hospital on Nov. 12.A note found inside the baby's clothes says only that the baby was born on Nov. 9.

The baby's two legs are joined together from thigh to heel. Doctors said the baby also suffers from severe internal defects -- it has no kidney or urinary tract, its heart does not function properly, its anus and genitals are underdeveloped, its alimentary tract is deformed and its intestines obstructed.

"It is very difficult to conduct peritoneal dialysis on newborns, but the procedure is producing positive results," said Zhu Yimin, president of the hospital, adding that dialysis was helping the baby discharge waste from its body and thereby creating better conditions for further treatment.







Sirenomelia, or "mermaid" syndrome, occurs in one out of every 70,000 births. The condition is almost always fatal within days of delivery due to serious defects to the vital organs and because of complications associated with abnormal kidney and bladder development and function.

There are only two known cases of children with the affliction alive in the world today. One is Tiffany Yorks, a 17-year-old American girl born with sirenomelia whose legs were successfully separated when she was a baby, and the other is two-year-old Peruvian girl Milagros Cerron, who underwent an operation to separate her legs last year.

Doctors are studying the Hunan "mermaid" baby to determine an operation schedule, said Zhu.

Zhu said they planned to first operate on the deformed digestive tract and deal with the intestinal obstruction, to restore the baby's digestive function.

Several other operations will need to be carried out before the baby's legs are surgically separated, Zhu said. "The operations will be complicated and risky, but we'll try our best."

The hospital has decided to assume responsibility for the cost of treatment.

The baby's parents have not made themselves known.

Editor: Donald
By: Source:China
View website-----http://www.newsgd.com/news/picstories/200611230007.htm

MYSTERY CONTINUES

Mermen or Mermaids depending upon their gender. They have the lower bodies of fish and the upper bodies and heads of humans.

Sightings

In the twelfth century it was reported that a merman was caught by fishermen off the east coast near Suffolk, England (UK). He seemed unable to speak when released from the nets. The merman was taken to a church, and even tortured but still not utter a sound. Described as 'the appearance of a man in all his parts' the merman quickly escaped when taken to the water supposedly to bath.

'This morning, one of our companie saw a Mermaid, and calling up some of the companie to see her, one more came up...From the navel upwards, her back and breasts were like a woman's...her body as big as one of us; in her going downe they saw her tayle, which was the tayle of a Porposse, and speckled like a Macrell.'

Henry Hudson, Explorer, 1608.

'My attention was arrested by the appearance of a figure resembling an unclothed human female sitting on a rock extending to the sea, apparently in the action of combing its hair. It remained on the rock three or four minutes after I observed it, and was exercised during that period in combing its hair, which was long and thick. I has a distinct view of the features, being at no great distance from an eminence above the rock on which it was sitting, and the sun brightly shining.'

'The Carmina Gadelica' William Munro, Schoolmaster circa 1785. 'The Times' newspaper.

A mermaid was said to haunt 'Mermaid Rock', Cornwall (UK). Whenever she was sighted it indicated that there was a shipwreck to be expected and therefore the lifeboats should be prepared. It was said that she lured the ships towards the rocks by her singing. 'Doom Bar', in east Cornwall, was a sand bank that used to cause many shipwrecks near the mouth to the harbour. It was believed that the sand bar caused the many disasters as the result of a mermaid that had been shot there whilst she was enjoying swimming in the harbour. The constant arrival of fog on the Isle of Man, off England (UK), was believed to be the result of a mermaid who was rejected. She was so upset that fog surrounded the island, causing problems for the local shipping.

In 1830 a reported sighting by local people was alleged to have occurred in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland (UK). The mermaid was said to have disappeared underwater after having been hit on the back by a rock. She was later buried after being found dead on the beach.

'The upper portion of the creature was about the size of a well-fed child of three or four years of age, with an abnormally developed breast. The hair was long and glossy, while the skin was white, soft and tender. The lower part was like a salmon, but without scales.'

The sighting of a mermaid in the UK was made in 1947 off the Isle of Muck, Scotland (UK). Sandwood, in Sutherland (UK), was once known as the 'Land of Mermaids' because of the number of sightings.

The mermaid was described as the top half of the body resembling that of a European woman, whilst the bottom was said to resemble that of a fish. This sighting was in 1977. In 1990 a creature, which has yet to be categorised, was found in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland (UK) believed by some to be a mermaid. The last reported sighting of a mermaid outside the British Isles was in Lusaka.

AWAIT NEXT POST WOULD BE ON the mythological siren

LINK TO SEE MERMAID SIGHTING-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUtAAbWDYJ4

Mermaid Sightings Claimed in Israel
bradford-columnist-

By Benjamin Radford, LiveScience's Bad Science Columnist

posted: 13 August 2009 05:56 pm ET



Locals and tourists in the Israeli town of Kiryat Yam have been flocking to the coast in hopes of glimpsing a creature that most people believe only exist in fairy tales.

An alleged mermaid, said to resemble a cross between a fish and a young girl, only appears at sunset. It performs a few tricks for onlookers before disappearing for the night.

One of the first people to see the mermaid, Shlomo Cohen, said, "I was with friends when suddenly we saw a woman laying on the sand in a weird way. At first I thought she was just another sunbather, but when we approached she jumped into the water and disappeared. We were all in shock because we saw she had a tail."

The sightings apparently began several months ago.

$1 million reward

The town's tourism board is of course delighted with their newfound fame and local mystery fauna. Taking a cue from the town of Inverness, Scotland (on the shore of Loch Ness), the Kiryat Yam government has offered a $1 million reward for the first person to photograph the creature. Town spokesman Natti Zilberman thinks the reward money is well-spent. "I believe if there really is a mermaid then so many people will come to Kiryat Yam, a lot more money will be made than $1 million.”

Of course, if the mermaid does not exist -- perhaps it is a hoax, an optical illusion, or a simple misperception of a known animal -- then the town's reward money will remain safe and unclaimed, while the economy benefits from the influx of tourists vying to get a photo that will leave them set for life.

It's not clear what people are seeing, though the power of suggestion and imagination can be strong. Identifying animals in water is inherently problematic, since eyewitnesses by definition are only seeing a small part of the creature. When you add in the factor of low light at sunset and the distances involved, positively identifying even a known creature can be very difficult -- to say nothing of a mythological one!

Mermaids have long held fascination for seafaring peoples. There are a few dozen significant historical claims of actual mermaid sightings. Most of them are clearly myths and legends, such as "true" stories about lovely young women who married sailors but were later discovered to be shape-shifting mermaids (such as in the film "Splash").

Other reports date back centuries, and offer no proof or evidence other than a curious story. For example, a Capt. Richard Whitbourne claimed he saw a mermaid in Newfoundland's St. James harbor in 1610. Another story, from 1830 Scotland, claimed that a young boy killed a mermaid by throwing rocks at it; the creature looked like a child of about 3 or 4, but had a salmon's tail instead of legs. The villagers supposedly had it a funeral and buried it in a small coffin.

P.T. Barnum's mermaid

Hoaxers have worked to satisfy the public's appetite for mermaids; the fact that none have ever actually been found is only a minor inconvenience.

The great showman P.T. Barnum introduced a mermaid to astounded crowd in the 1840s: his infamous "FeeJee Mermaid", actually a taxidermy fake. The head and torso of a small monkey was grafted onto the body and tail of a fish. It was bizarre and strange - --certainly nothing anyone had seen before — but a far cry from the banners and posters suggesting a beautiful, half-naked woman.

Other mermaid fakes appeared throughout the centuries. Some were manatees that had been dressed up to resemble a human form and exhibited for profit.

Whether the Israeli mermaid sighting is genuine, a hoax, or an innocent mistake exploited for tourism, the reality of finding a real mermaid might be different than people imagine, as shown by a song from the Newfoundland band Great Big Sea, which sings folk-rock versions of traditional sea shanties. One of their most popular songs, titled "The Mermaid," tells of a lonely sailor who courts a mermaid:

"I love the girl with all me heart / But I only like the upper part / I do not like the tail!"

courtesy--http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/080211-fairytales-science.html