About event

Join us for this exciting livestreamed SSN Healthy Futures seminar with Dr Nancy Segal, joined by Dr Evie Kendal and Prof Neera Bhatia.

Deliberately Divided: Inside the Controversial Study of Twins and Triplets Adopted Apart

Abstract

An in-depth investigation of a highly controversial and ethically compromised twin study is presented. In the 1960s, an otherwise reputable New York City adoption agency separated twins and triplets relinquished for adoption. A team of investigators from the agency and from the Jewish Board of Guardians’ Child Development Center tracked the children’s development from birth to age twelve years–while never telling their adoptive parents they were raising a “singleton twin.” Parents were only told that their child was enrolled in a developmental study and were subtly advised that failure to cooperate with the researchers would mean that the child would be given to another family. This study, far outside the mainstream of scientific twin research, was not well known among scholars or the general public until it became the focus of two recent films, Three Identical Strangers (2018) and The Twinning Reaction (2017). Audiences were shocked, angered, saddened, and left wanting to know more.

Interviews with the researchers’ colleagues and friends and family members of the agency’s psychiatric consultant were conducted. Most of these individuals supported their late colleagues, despite knowing little about the twin study which the investigators did not discuss beyond their select psychoanalytic circle. A discussion with the study’s principal investigator (prior to his death), as well as a former agency administrator, research assistants, ethicists, attorneys, journalists, and—most importantly–the twins and their families who were unwitting participants in this disturbing study, are riveting. Through records, letters and other documents, the investigators’ attempts to engage other agencies in separating twins, their efforts to avoid media exposure, their worries over 1970s informed consent issues, and the steps taken toward avoiding lawsuits, while hoping to enjoy the rewards of publication, are exposed.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Nancy L. Segal works in the department of Psychology at California State University, Fullerton. She received a B.A. degree in psychology and English literature from Boston University (1973), and M.A. (1974) and Ph.D. (1982) degrees in the Social Sciences and Behavioral Sciences from the University of Chicago. From 1982-1991 she was a post-doctoral fellow and research associate at the University of Minnesota, affiliated with the well-known Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart. She is currently Professor of Psychology at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) and Director of the Twin Studies Center, which she founded in 1991. Dr. Segal is regarded as a world-class expert on twins and twin research, as evidenced by her prolific scientific writing and numerous invitations to address national and international audiences, both professional and public. Her eighth book on twins, Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive, an annotated collection of photographs she took at the 40th anniversary reunion of twin survivors and the brutal medical experimentation of Dr. Josef Mengele, will be released in March 2023. Her ninth book, Twin Fathers-Gay Sons: The Citizenship Case That Captured the World, will be published in August 2023.

You can learn more about Dr Segal’s numerous publications, prestigious awards, editorial work and media engagement on her website.

Discussants

Dr Segal will be joined in conversation by bioethicist and public health scientist Dr Evie Kendal (Swinburne) and the SSN’s co-convenor and Deakin University Associate Professor in Law, specailsing in health, A/ Prof Neera Bhatia.

Join the livestream on the SSN’s YouTube be channel here.

In order to take part in the live chat and Q and A, please sign in to a Youtube account.

Join the conversation on Twitter @SSNDeakin.