HDAC intern Rebecca's Post for 6/21 "Teratology"

The other day at lunch everyone was talking about weddings and Mike, the museum archivist, asked me if I planned on getting married anytime soon. My answer was a definitive “No!” because I’m only 20 and I still have a lot of schooling ahead of me. If anything, my interning here has only reinforced that answer.
Getting married leads to having kids, and do you know how many things can go wrong with an embryo? Anyone who has seen the “From a Single Cell” exhibit in the museum can attest to the multitude of abnormalities that can emerge during development. Looking through the teratology files – teratology is the study of developmental abnormalities – in HDAC to research pathologies for my project certainly doesn’t help either.
Abnormalities range from the nonfatal or easily-corrected, like polydactyly, to the always fatal or severely malformed, like “acardiac monsters,” in which at least one monozygotic twin is missing entire organ systems and body parts. I can’t imagine the devastation of a mother who is told she is carrying a “monster.”
Many congenital defects are brought on by environmental stimuli, like fetal alcohol syndrome or limb deformities caused by drugs such as thalomide. Many more, however, are hereditary. I’ve seen many pictures of genetically inherited anomalies, such as icthyosis, the excessive keratinization of the skin, causing scaly or cracked skin, and anencephaly, the improper closing of the neural tube or absence of the skull, causing brain exposure to amniotic fluid. This picture is an X-ray of a baby with sirenomelia from the early 20th century; there is also a fetal sirenomelia specimen on the museum floor. The legs are fused together because abnormal umbilical cord vessels deprive the lower body of blood during development.
Any parents concerned that their daughters aren’t ready to have children should just point them in the direction of a teratology collection. If I hadn’t been telling my mother for years now that she would have to wait a long time for grandchildren, she would probably receive the news after my internship here. Better yet, I’ll probably just adopt.