Medicine: Death of a Twin

For 34 days it was touch & go for Roger Brodie, the bigger but weaker of the skull-joined Siamese twins, separated in an operation that made medical history (TIME, Dec. 29). Roger continued to exist in a deep coma, but that was all. Late one night last week he died. At the University of Illinois' Neuropsychiatric Institute in Chicago, doctors listed pressure on the vital centers at the base of the brain as one cause of death. Actually, the wonder was not what killed 16-month-old Roger but how he had stayed alive so long.

Twin Rodney was still listed as in "critical"...

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