DISTORTED SOUNDS ECHO
To the authorities, this woman is invisible.
She can bamboozle the most sophisticated
security systems on the planet.
Cheryl is one of a tiny handful of people
who was born WITHOUT fingerprints.
Just a few small creases on the end of her fingers.
That is really strange! Mine has got the classic whorls
and yours has just got a few scratches.
'Cheryl's condition is known as immigration delay disease.'
I worked as a flight attendant
and after flight attendant school,
you have to get your security clearance.
And for most of the students in my class, it took two weeks.
It took almost 10 weeks for me to get mine.
- Because people just couldn't believe... - Yeah, yeah...
..that you didn't have them.
It's very strange because fingerprints are something
that we absolutely see as a core part of our identity, who we are.
And yet, you don't have...
- And in a way, that makes you even more unique, even more unusual. - Yes.
Your fingerprints are just one of the many personal traits
that are shaped by your time in the womb.
By eight weeks, we are starting to look human
but still lack individuality.
In this episode, we'll chart the middle 16 weeks
and a series of critical events make each one of us unique.
The weeks, days, even the hours
when our faces form...
..our fingerprints develop...
..and our skin takes on its colour.
CHEERING, WHISTLE BLOWS
Our brains and personality are also moulded by powerful hormones.
If I turned around and there was a giant wave,
I would be almost in a zombie-like state and I would be drawn to it.
Even feelings about our sex and gender
can be shaped by what happens to us long before birth.
Your mom and dad think you're a boy,
then you're actually a girl...
So, let's follow the magical metamorphosis, zoom in on
some of the key moments that made you into the unique person you are.
AMPLIFIED HEARTBEAT
COCKEREL CROWS
WHISTLING AND SHOUTING
One of the most obvious things that defines us is our sex.
Every Friday night, the men in this village gather for a ritual
that, for them, celebrates being male.
While the women have their own traditions.
PRIEST CHANTS
But this village harbours a very strange secret...
..which begins long before birth.
At conception, we all inherit genes that instruct our bodies to make us male or female.
But for the first few weeks of our lives, we all look the same.
It's only from eight weeks, if you're male,
that your genes instruct your body to release a critical hormone.
Testosterone.
And this should trigger a rather important physical transformation.
You start to grow a penis.
But occasionally, the body doesn't respond to testosterone.
And life becomes very confusing.
TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH:
When 24-year-old Johnny was born, his parents thought he was female.
They named him Felicita and raised him as a girl.
Johnny looked like a girl because in the womb, his body hadn't
produced the kind of testosterone needed to form male genitals.
He was born without a penis.
Johnny is not alone.
One in 90 of the males in this village are born with no penis.
And so, initially, they are brought up as girls.
Like two-year-old Gaudelin.
TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH:
Gaudelin, like Johnny, is biologically male.
She has a Y-chromosome that should, in the womb,
have made her into a boy.
For the first eight weeks of our lives,
whether we are male or female, we all have a protrusion called a tubercle.
And a set of internal glands called gonads.
If you are male, a gene on the Y-chromosome now instructs
the gonads to become testicles.
This leads to the creation of a powerful form of testosterone,
dihydrotestosterone,
Which turns the tubercle into a penis.
If you're a female, your gonads become your ovaries.
You don't make dihydrotestosterone and your tubercle becomes a clitoris.
Johnny and Gaudelin lack the enzyme that produces
dihydrotestosterone.
So, they couldn't grow a penis in the womb.
But extraordinarily enough, they CAN do so later in life.
AMPLIFIED HEARTBEAT
Normally, it is an extremely rare condition.
But in this village, it's so common, it's completely accepted.
Nine-year-old Carla has been showing signs for some time
that she is not actually a girl.
TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH:
CHILDREN SHOUT
Carla is approaching puberty.
A time when males get another surge of testosterone.
She is on the brink of growing a penis...
..because this time, Carla doesn't need
the dihydrotestosterone that she cannot make.
She, like Johnny, is known as a "Guevedoce",
which literally means, "penis at 12".
Her whole life is about to change.
Carla's transition to boyhood will be made easier
because there is another Guevedoce in the family.
Her cousin, Catherine.
He officially became a boy at 11. But he hasn't changed his name.
UPBEAT LATIN MUSIC PLAYS
It's 17 years since Johnny transformed into a male.
Life and love can be complicated for the Guevedoces.
But they still have the same hopes and desires as the rest of us.
MUSIC ENDS
At the same time, another important part of us is coming together,
at the top of our body.
FIDDLE MUSIC PLAYS
A structure which is fundamental to our identity.
Our face.
Now, you probably look a bit like one of your parents,
or perhaps a mixture of the two.
But unless you have an identical twin,
then there is absolutely nobody else
on earth who looks exactly like you do.
And that's because there are so many variables involved.
One reason why we look so different may be because the genes that
create the face are switched on and off at different times.
And it's one of the most complicated things that happens in the womb.
Just four weeks ago, the embryo was the size of an apple pip.
AMPLIFIED HEART BEATS RAPIDLY
Then, genes inherited from our ancient fishy ancestors
switched on and created gill-like structures,
called pharyngeal arches.
These changed to become parts of the ear, jaw and throat.
Until, at last, a human face emerged.
The final part comes together around eight weeks.
But if anything interrupts the complex assembly,
the jigsaw will never be completed.
Oliver's face didn't fully come together.
He was born four weeks ago with a cleft lip.
Do you mind if I hold him?
- No, not at all. - Lovely. Hello! Hello, young one!
- Very relaxed, isn't he? - He's a very chilled baby. - Yeah.
'Before he was born, Oliver's parents, Kerry and Dave,
'knew he was going to be different.'
So, when did you first find out?
- At the 20-week scan. - Mm-hm. - Yeah, she spotted it pretty quickly.
It was a bit of a shock. Initially.
Yeah, you were saying you think it's a bit easier, sometimes, if it's a boy.
Yeah, I think just because boys can sort of handle scars
- and it becomes part of their, you know, their story. - Yeah.
Whereas, girls, you're just wanting them to be perfect
- and beautiful. - I think it's...
There's something about it, that you would like them to keep it, you know?
If it wasn't something that would hinder, you know, his eating or,
- you know, his speech... - Mm.
- You kind of like the Elvis look, do you? - Yeah.
- Hello! - You like Michael, don't you, Oliver?
Now, there are hundreds of different genes that go together to form
a human face.
And in some cases of cleft lip and palate, you can
point to the particular gene and say it's that one.
But not in the case of little Oliver.
He came as a complete surprise
and there is absolutely no family history, which would suggest
that his cleft lip is a result of a random genetic mutation.
BELL TOLLS
Felicity Mehendale is preparing to operate on his lip.
Cleft lips and cleft palates are actually the most common
congenital condition that we see.
So, they give us
a huge amount of information about how our human faces form.
I think it's so easy to look at a human face
and take for granted that that's the way it always was.
But, to think that my eyes started out here,
my nose started up there,
my top lip was in three separate bits
and...
I had a 1 in 1,000 chance that a bit of my top lip
wouldn't have zipped up.
Oliver is now three months old and strong enough for surgery.
How are you feeling about today?
OK. Nervous.
He's happy...
Totally oblivious to what's going to happen.
Hi! He's still smiling!
If I didn't repair Oliver's lip,
the gap in his lip would let his gum dry out.
He'd look different and, importantly, when he started
to say things like, "Papa" and "Baba", he'd have a little bit
of air leaking through his lip and it would make it a little bit more
difficult for him to communicate the way maybe we take for granted.
Clever boy!
Clever boy...
- OLIVER CRIES - Shhh, Mummy's here, darling. Mummy's here. There you go.
There you go.
Right, shall I scrub up?
Super.
Local going in, Caroline.
Pop that in the muscle, Stephanie, if you wouldn't mind.
Just very gently... Ah, that's lovely, thank you.
That's great, thanks.
To bring the base of little Oliver's nose, on the right,
I lift the base of his nose along with
the tissues of his cheek off the bone of his upper jaw.
So, I'm just wanting to free this.
You can see this bit's going into the columella.
Knife, thanks.
I'm trying to re-align tissues
and structures that would have joined, trying to put them
in a position that allows them to work the way they should work.
But I think it's quite a challenge because the anatomy is
so beautiful, the way it forms in the womb.
And it's actually quite humbling when you try to recreate that.
You can just see Oliver's lip beginning to come together now.
That's it. That looks happy.
So, he was asleep after the surgery for a fair bit,
till about tea-time. And when he woke up and was able to...
- And just saw us... - ..and recognise us and he did his usual thing...
- Smiling straight away. - Which was amazing. - It was.
It's just like there's hardly anything there already.
It's the craft that they've...
- Yeah, what Felicity can do. - Yeah.
By 11 weeks,
our legs and arms are moving.
Our nervous system is learning to control our body.
But, for some reason, even at this early stage,
we tend to favour one hand over the other.
# Left, right
# Left, right... #
In most animals, the split between left and right
is pretty much the same.
But 90% of humans are right-handed.
# ..Left, right
# Left, right... #
How it happens remains a mystery.
Why it happens is also something of a puzzle.
Left-handedness runs in families,
which suggests there is a genetic component to it.
But the thing is, there are disadvantages to being a lefty.
They tend, on average, to be slightly shorter
and also more prone to migraines and dyslexia.
The thing is that natural selection favours traits
which are beneficial over those which are not,
which begs the question,
why are there so many left-handed people still about?
Boxer Tom Stalker is one of the 10%
that favours the left.
He has to live in a world skewed to the right.
When I pour the tea in the kettle,
I always use my right hand, funnily enough.
Using scissors, I've got to get my bird to do it!
HE LAUGHS
Tom believes his left hand, or southpaw, saved him.
I left school with no qualifications.
I was robbing cars,
I was going on the streets drinking all sorts of alcohol, thinking...
I was just a little rebel.
CHEERING
Now he's a medal-winning boxer.
Here comes local lad, Tom Stalker.
Like, my first ever amateur fight, I was saying, "Please, put me on,"
because my two younger brothers were fighting on it, and I won.
I was just awkward and I just kept winning.
And even to this day, now, you know, I'm just a very awkward,
know how to win sort of fighter.
For Team GB boxing,
Tom Stalker!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In 2012,
he captained Britain's most successful ever Olympic team.
This might offer a clue to why natural selection
hasn't bred out left-handedness.
I'm just very awkward.
If you ask any orthodox, they'll go,
"He's just horrible, he's a nightmare," you know.
They throw shots from different angles.
I feel a lot more vulnerable against a southpaw
than I do against an orthodox, because of the feet.
He always has the foot on the outside, so by him having his foot
on the outside, it makes me have to adjust my feet a lot more,
which, sometimes, I'm worried about adjusting my feet,
which makes me make mistakes.
We can be confident that the proportion of left-handers
hasn't changed for 10,000 years,
because 10% of tools archaeologists uncover are for lefties.
It seems plausible that, in the past,
when battles between warring tribes were fought hand-to-hand,
left-handers like Tom would have had an advantage.
So they were more likely to survive a fight
and pass their trait on to another generation.
There you go again, look.
Yeah, I'm stuck.
If that's true, then you might expect more left-handers
in sports like boxing, tennis,
cricket and baseball.
And that turns out to be the case.
There are more than three times as many left-handers
in these sports than in the normal population.
Being a boxer has given me discipline,
it's given me self-respect.
I've travelled all over the world.
It's just given me a great life.
I think this is an intriguing example
of how being different can offer an advantage,
allowing you to come at the world from another angle.
Another thing that distinguishes us is our skin colour.
Humans come in a wide spectrum of tones.
And the colour we end up with is created in the womb.
The foundations for our skin colour aren't laid until 13 weeks.
Until then, we appear transparent,
though beneath the surface, a transformation is under way.
A swarm of cells called melanocytes spread.
And they will release a pigment called melanin.
The amount you produce depends on your ethnicity.
The more you make, the darker your skin.
Here in Kenya, most people have an abundance of melanin.
Melanin protects skin cells and reduces the risk of skin cancer...
..by stopping it from absorbing too much ultraviolet light.
In northern countries, people tend to produce less melanin
because they face a different challenge.
The sun is weaker and people need to absorb more sunlight to
produce vitamin D.
So they've adapted and have fairer skins.
But there are some people who have no melanin at all.
28-year-old Nassoro Kasim is an albino.
He should have dark skin...
..but he has a genetic condition which means
most of his melanocytes are unable to make melanin.
The only place he produces the pigment is in the occasional mole.
So he has very little protection from the sun.
Nassoro is from Tanzania and works part-time washing cars,
but his real passion is football.
Today, his team will be playing their first international game
against a Kenyan side.
Nassoro's skin is unusual but by no means unique.
There are thought to be around 150,000 albinos in Tanzania alone.
In fact, all of Nassoro's team-mates have the same condition.
They call themselves Albino United.
Because their skin offers no melanin protection,
Albino United only play once the sun starts to set.
CHEERING
But even in football, there will always be barriers.
Over the last few weeks, a rapid transformation has taken place,
on the outside at least.
By now, we should have a unique set of fingerprints...
..be developing a distinctive skin tone...
..and a recognisable face.
Now, our individuality, our identity,
is obviously about far more than simply our outward appearance.
There are also some changes that take place inside the womb during those
early months that not only influence how you turn out, but your survival.
- KNOCK ON DOOR - Hello.
- Hi, Joanne. - Hi.
- This is it. - It's my birthday. - It's your birthday.
- A bit emotional. It gets like... - Everyone does. - Do they? - Yeah.
Good. I'm not the only one...
Last year, Jo Chapman was diagnosed with an aggressive
form of blood cancer.
It was about the middle of September and I started to feel quite unwell.
I thought I had a run of the mill virus, hot sweats, achy...
It was our daughter's birthday, but I couldn't even stand up to
watch her open any of her party presents and that's really unusual.
- Later that evening, Jo was diagnosed with... - Leukaemia. - ..leukaemia.
Jo's best chance is a bone marrow transplant from a matched donor.
But this is tricky because of another unique part of us
that develops in the womb.
By week 14, we are getting ready for a life after birth.
As soon as we enter the world, we'll be under attack.
All sorts of germs will be ready and waiting for us.
So the pressure's on to build specialised cells that will hunt
and kill any invaders.
The immune system.
It's something most of us never have to think about,
unless there comes a time when we need a transplant.
I just hope that there's a donor for me.
I guess, we're just relying on a phone call.
Jo's search is hard
because of the way all our immune systems develop in the womb.
14 weeks - only now is a key part of the immune system becoming
fully active.
Human leukocyte antigens, otherwise known as the HLA system,
are getting ready to detect telltale traces of viruses within cells.
If they find any, they'll bring them to the surface of the cell,
so they can be destroyed.
Across human populations, HLA systems are incredibly varied,
to fight off the wide range of infections we face.
Even though this is a problem if you're looking for a donor match.
So, how did we all end up with such different immune systems?
Well, there's an intriguing theory,
which suggests it may be down to who we find attractive.
In 1994, a group of Swiss researchers did a rather unusual experiment.
They asked a group of blokes, 44 of them, to wear some T-shirts,
and wear them for two days without washing or using deodorant.
Then, they got some lucky girls in and they had to sniff those
T-shirts and they had to judge them from one to ten on sexiness.
Now, strangely enough, when they crunched the data afterwards,
they discovered that the T-shirts which had been rated
sexiest by the women were those that had been worn by blokes who had very
different immune systems to their own and that suggests that the
women were somehow unconsciously picking this up through smell.
Now, this is probably overdoing it,
but this study certainly suggests that the form your immune system
took in the womb might have had some influence on who you found
attractive later in life.
So, parents are maybe unwittingly creating children that are more
resistant to infection by choosing a partner with an HLA system
very different to their own.
Variety is good, but not if you need a compatible matched organ.
Fortunately, a worldwide HLA database of donors is bringing hope to
people like Jo.
I'm getting ready for a bone marrow transplant tomorrow.
But I feel incredibly humble.
I can't believe there is such a person that exists out there.
He's a 22-year-old male. He is almost ten out of ten fully matched.
He's been referred to me almost like a perfect twin.
I'm guessing we look nothing like each other.
- This is it. - Wahey.
T-day!
It's seven months since Jo was diagnosed with cancer.
Blood stem cells harvested from the bone marrow of Jo's donor have
arrived at the Royal Marsden, where she's being treated.
The stem cells have come into my body.
It will apparently go round my bloodstream a couple of times
and then it's got like a homing sensor and it will actually
gravitate towards my bone marrow, which is what I need it to do.
- All done. Congratulations, Joanne. - Wahey. - Well done!
Toast!
Perfect.
Finding a close match has increased Jo's chances of recovery,
although the success of any transplant is by no means guaranteed.
The immune system is not the only complex system
developing inside us around this time.
Week 15 is a real milestone for your brain.
By then, your cerebral hemispheres, the parts of your brain that
make you really human, have all the brain cells they will ever need.
And the foundations are now being laid for that most personal
aspect of you - your mind.
The development of your mind is dependent on your culture,
your parents, the books you read, the people you have fallen in love with.
But underpinning it are the brain cells.
And the brain cells are, in turn,
shaped by events that happened to you long before you were born.
I wish I had the answer to why am I drawn to these great waves
and to these experiences?
That's out of my hands.
I'd like to say I have control of it, but...
it's got control of me!
Laird Hamilton is a big-wave surfer.
He has an appetite for risk
that may have been shaped by what happened to him before he was born.
Both males and females receive some testosterone in the womb.
But boys get a far larger dose
which peaks at around 15 weeks and floods the entire body.
This surge coincides with a time
when parts of our brain that form our personality are being organised.
So, the effects of testosterone on the brain can be significant.
They may even influence, for example, how thrill-seeking we become.
If I turned around and there was a giant wave,
I would be almost in a zombie-like state and I would be drawn to it.
It's as simple as it's just inside of me.
It's just inside my soul.
It's inside of my bones.
Bizarrely, you might spot a risk-taker by looking at their hands.
Testosterone appears to affect them as well as the brain.
High levels of testosterone in the womb...
..are associated with a longer ring finger compared to the index finger.
The length of my ring finger and the length of my index finger
are substantially different.
Which, I guess, leads to a lot of my problems.
HE LAUGHS
The finger ratio is a powerful reminder
of how nature shaped us in the womb.
But there's still plenty of room for nurturing to play its part, too.
I think my mom compelled me
to try to do things that had never been done.
She gave me the belief that the impossible is possible.
The sides to our personality
that have been linked to testosterone in the womb
are all traits we typically think of as male.
Behind these characteristics is a feeling of being male or female.
What we call our gender.
And this may also be influenced
by changing patterns of hormones whilst we develop.
The surge of testosterone in the blood that peaks at 15 weeks
floods the brain at a crucial time in its development.
But this sexing of our brain
happens at a different time to the sexing of our body.
So, occasionally, our gender and our genitals do not match.
Seven-year-old Mattie looks like a typical girl.
But she's in a boy's body.
Do you know what being transgender means?
It kind of means that your mom and dad think you're a boy,
then you're actually a girl.
So, you have to change all of that.
She just seemed like a regular baby. Nothing out of the ordinary.
We taught her baby sign early on, which was great,
because she was able to communicate with us early.
Except that then,
we were thinking that we were getting to know HIM, Mattheus.
No. No hamburgers right now.
- What's this one here? - It's me on my soccer team. - OK.
- The Pink Panthers. - The Pink Panthers.
- What position do you play? - I switch up a little.
- But I like goalie the most. - OK.
Because your butt's dead.
No, Noah!
- He talks about potty humour every day. - No, I don't.
That's boys for you, isn't it? Boys like talking about potty humour.
BIRD IMITATES LAUGHTER
- He thought that was funny, didn't he? Is that a boy or a girl? - Girl.
People have all sorts of ideas about how it comes to be.
And I think the bottom line is, it's hard to say how.
It just... It just is.
It's not my strength to think in terms of science.
I just know what I see and I know that, you know, without a doubt,
if you pop all our brains out right now, her brain would match my brain.
No-one knows why people like Mattie feel the way they do.
There are plenty of theories.
The biological explanation I find most convincing
is that although testosterone made her body male,
it didn't reach key parts of her brain.
A chained gene may have affected critical testosterone receptors.
Which could explain why Mattie feels female.
- Talk me through this. This is...? - Me when I was zero.
Me in my crib, I think.
Does that look to you like a boy?
Mm-hm. A little.
And when did you start growing your hair?
I think when I was...
When I was three, I started, I think.
By the age of four,
Mattie had already convinced her parents that he was a she.
She changed her name, and by the time she started school,
she was officially a girl.
This is when I was six. All of this is when I was six.
Very funny, isn't it? You with a moustache.
The thing that I found hard,
it's, like, my little boy and you wanted to play.
And you have this vision
of things that you're going to be doing with your little boy.
And it's pretty hard, because especially with the culture,
with the Mexican culture, it's very macho
and it's not very accepting of this and not very open.
And then also, what's that going to say about me as a father?
What do you think's going to happen in the future?
I was told that the doctors will watch for the stages of puberty,
block the testosterone that would be coming through her body.
And my hope is that she could take cross hormones
and be on the same timeframe as her peers in terms of...
- Her female peers? - ..her female peers in terms of puberty.
Estimates vary, but perhaps 1 in 10,000 of us is transgender.
This is just another variation of human condition, how we come out.
Might not be crazy rampant happening all around you, but it's happening.
And as people are finding the confidence to stand up and say,
"Yes, that's happening in my family,"
you'll probably realise, hey, that happened with my neighbour,
that happened with my cousin, that happened with my co-worker.
I really liked Mattie and her family.
She's warm, she's funny, she's engaging.
She's a very typical young girl.
And having met them,
it's obvious that she's the one who decided she is a girl.
Now, I think whatever triggered that decision
happened a long time ago and in the womb.
She has a lot of tough decisions ahead.
How far does she want to go with plastic surgery
and with hormone therapy?
But I'm also convinced that because of our improved understanding,
the future is far brighter for people like Mattie
than it would have been a generation ago.
The middle weeks in the womb
are a time of rapid development and personalisation.
Moment by moment, different aspects of us emerge.
Whether we feel male or female.
From our skin colour to our smiles.
The rich mix of genes and environment that come together in the womb
creates an almost infinite number of possibilities.
Which makes every one of us unique.
The range of different things that happen to us in the womb is so great
that no two human beings ever turn out exactly the same.
Not even so-called identical twins.
Does this matter? Yes, hugely.
In fact, the health of the human species depends on it.
You can see an example of what I mean in the Faroes,
a remote cluster of islands between Iceland and Norway.
For generations,
its inhabitants have been happily isolated from the rest of the world.
Yet recently, they've been haunted by a mysterious and macabre disease.
One that strikes people down in their prime.
I remember this one... I think he was 17, 18 years old.
He was just doing his fishing down at the shore
and he just fell dead in the water.
I just said, "It happened again."
There was a big concern in the community
that a silent killer was among us.
Dr Jan Rasmussen was on call when he got a message
to say that a 32-year-old woman called Majken had suddenly collapsed.
They just went to bed
and her husband then notices that she's fighting for her life.
She's gasping for air and then she suddenly just stops breathing.
She gets her pulse back while in the ambulance.
And when she arrives in the hospital,
she gets a cardiac arrest again.
And it continues and continues.
So, we have to resuscitate her about 15 times.
Majken survived.
But years earlier, her sister, who had similar symptoms,
was not so fortunate.
Majken's mother is haunted by what happened that day.
Jan and his team investigated all the unexplained deaths on the islands.
They suspected that the sisters were suffering from a rare condition
that can be traced back to 23 weeks in the womb.
At this point in our development,
our bodies start to pile on significant amounts of fat.
This fat will provide the energy our muscles will need after we're born.
Most crucially, the muscles of the heart.
But this energy is only accessible if you have the key to unlocking it.
A chemical called carnitine.
Whilst we're still in the womb, we receive carnitine from our mother.
And once we're born, we get it from our diet.
But some people have difficulty absorbing it into their muscles.
Without enough carnitine, there's a risk your heart will suddenly stop.
This is what Jan thought had happened to Majken.
In a final effort to save her life, he injected her with carnitine.
Within hours, she'd made a remarkable recovery.
It was quite a unique story that I was on call
with some information regarding her sister which benefited Majken.
Further investigation revealed that Majken,
like the others who'd died, had a rare genetic condition
called carnitine transporter disease, or CTD.
This was the silent killer.
In response, the government initiated a mass screening programme.
The results were astonishing.
Elsewhere, CTD occurs in less than 1 in 40,000 people.
But on the Faroes, it is more than 100 times as common.
This mysterious disease in the Faroe Islands
illustrates the importance of diversity.
In a small, enclosed community,
the appearance of a new, random mutation can be spread,
handed down the generations.
Out there in the wider world, it would become diluted,
maybe even disappear.
For those who have the condition,
there is, fortunately, an effective remedy.
Majken now adds carnitine to her diet to replace what her body can't store.
She also knows she won't pass the disease on to her children,
because they don't share her genes.
She and her husband, Jakob, have adopted two boys from South Korea.
The more we learn about ourselves,
the more we realise that our individuality matters.
And that our differences make us all stronger.
We are the unpredictable product of genes, environment and culture.
And yet that is also what makes us the varied, robust
and endlessly fascinating creatures that we all are.
The final 16 weeks.
Our senses switch on.
Bones harden.
And our lungs get ready for us to take our first breath.
The Open University has produced a poster
exploring how the process of development affects your health
after birth and long into adulthood.
To order your free copy, please call...
Or go to...
And follow the links to the Open University.