Estranged twins reunited 27 years later unlock secrets to health
Medical researchers are very interested in a set of Sydney twins who didn’t know each other existed for almost 30 years, even though they had been raised in neighbouring suburbs.
But what they've done and what they do now has allowed researchers to investigate what is strongest between genes and environment.
For the first 27 years of their lives, identical twins Joy and Margaret had no idea they had another half.
"I always thought I had a double, because my mother didn't want to tell me that I was a twin 11,” Margaret said.
They were adopted separately, and grew up in neighbouring suburbs in Sydney's south west, Bexley and Hurstville.
The girls never crossed paths and didn't meet until they were both married with families of their own.
“I remember the moment, the moment I felt suddenly so close to Margaret, I said 'we really are sisters',” Joy said.
Twin research has been around since the late 1800s and it has been used for everything from uncovering personality traits to discovering the certain environmental factors that cause disease.
The great thing about twin research is it is not just for twins - everyone can benefit.
World-leading twins researcher Dr Nancy Segal has studied Joy and Margaret, as an example of twins raised apart.
“If there are certain environmental factors that prevent disease expression in one twin, perhaps we can apply that at the level of the non-twin population,” Dr Segal said.
Twins like Margaret and Joy who are raised apart share all their genes but not their environment, so they can reveal how genes affect our behaviours, such as intelligence, personality and social attitudes, and how they contribute to differences in disease.
“Parents can learn that sensitive parenting is probably the most important thing that they can do, that in many ways children will let you know what's best for them,” Dr Segal said.
Dr Segal was in Melbourne for The Healthier Kids conference with the Australian Twin Registry and the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute.
“At the non-twin level, twins can tell us so much about who we are, and how we got that way,” Dr Segal said.
Margaret and Joy now choose to spend a lot of time together.
“Joy and I were unsure of ourselves because the other half was missing, yeah, but if we'd been together we would have been completely different - dynamite, truly, we're dynamite now,” Margaret said.
