MovieChat Forums > Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (2009) Discussion > The real story of the twins he seperated

The real story of the twins he seperated


The film was made in 2009 & the end text states the 2 twins were still alive & residing in Germany. This gave me the impression the operation i had just witnessed was a success & they both went on to lead happy seperate lives.
However, a quick google destroys that idea ? I enjoyed the film but i'm not impressed they sugar coated the real story, after they had used the twins as the start/end point of the film.

From Ben Carsons own Wiki page .....

The Johns Hopkins surgical team rehearsed the surgery for weeks, practicing on two dolls secured together by Velcro.[30] Although follow-up stories were few following the Binder twins' return to Germany seven months after the operation,[30] both twins were reportedly "far from normal" two years after the procedure, with one in a vegetative state.[31][32][33][30] "I will never get over this . . . Why did I have them separated?" said their mother, Theresia Binder, in a 1993 interview.[30] Neither twin was ever able to talk or care for himself, and both would eventually become institutionalized wards of the state.[30] Patrick Binder died sometime during the last decade, according to his uncle, who was located by the Washington Post in 2015.[30] The Binder surgery served as blueprint for similar twin separations, a procedure which was refined in subsequent decades.[30] Carson participated in four subsequent high-risk conjoined twin separations, including a 1997 operation on craniopagus Zambian twins, Joseph and Luka Banda, which resulted in a normal neurological outcome.[30] Two sets of twins died, including Iranian twins Ladan and Laleh Bijani; another separation resulted in the death of one twin and the survival of another, who is legally blind and struggles to walk

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