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William Shatner:
You know what?

I've been around for a while.

I've travelled the world,
met some interesting people,

done some crazy things.

So, you might just think

there's not much
that could take me by surprise.

You'd be wrong.

The world is
full of stories and science

and things that
amaze and confound me

every single day,

incredible mysteries
that keep me awake at night.

Some I can answer.

Others...

just defy logic --

like the
heart transplant patient

who undergoes an uncanny
transformation,

assuming the
personality of his donor.

Scientists ask,

could the story of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

be real?

A weird phenomenon is
appearing in lakes and rivers --

perfect circles of ice,

some so big
they're visible from space.

What are they?

And a DNA test
that suggests the impossible --

a mother somehow genetically
unrelated to her own children.

Could the test be wrong,

or is the truth
beyond reason?

Could it be possible
for a human being

to have more than
one set of DNA?

Yup...

it's a weird world.

And I love it.

You don't need me
to tell you

that modern medicine
is utterly remarkable.

The kind of procedures
that only existed

in the realm of
science fiction 50 years ago

are now commonplace.

Take heart failure --

still the world's
biggest killer,

but these days,
if you're lucky,

doctors can transplant

a healthy heart
into your chest.

Within weeks,

you can be up and running,
with a whole new lease on life,

thanks to the kindness
of some recently departed donor.

Incredible!

But as this next

weird tale will reveal,

transplant patients

may be getting more
than they bargained for --

not simply
someone else's heart

but their personality, too.

I had worked very hard,
and I had sold my soul

for the greenback.

I was a fat,
out of shape businessman,

not taking care of himself.

William Shatner:
Bill Wohl was obsessed
with making money,

but when he suffered
a massive heart attack in 1999,

his life changed forever.

They told me
a number of times

I was their
worst cardiac case, ever.

William Shatner:
Bill needed a new heart,
and on February 22, 2000,

a suitable organ
became available.

The donor was
a Hollywood stuntman

named Brady Michaels,

a fit, focused,
passionate man,

who tragically died

doing the job he loved.

Brady's death would ultimately
save Bill Wohl's life.

Bill Wohl:
I remember waking up
that afternoon, very sore,

but I had a new heart,

and I was smiling.

I was grinning
from ear to ear

'cause I was
so thankful, 'cause,

living in the hospital,

you get to appreciate.

And if you're smart,
you learn

love, patience,
tolerance and understanding,

'cause there are so many
angry people in the world.

William Shatner:
But after his operation,

Bill says he started acting
in strange new ways.

Bill Wohl:
Well, the first thing
that really shocked me

was that day,
driving to work.

I usually listen
to classic hard rock --

Led Zeppelin,
things like that.

Don't ask me why,

but, that morning,
I flipped it to,

like,
a jazz station.

And I'm driving to work,

and I hear this song,

and it was Sade,
the Kiss of Life.

And I started crying,

and it was like
butter going through a knife.

And I usually don't cry.

It takes a lot
to make me cry,

and, uh,
here I was,

like,
freaking out.

William Shatner:
Bill learned later
that his heart's donor,

Brady Michaels,
was also a jazz aficionado.

According to Bill,

the transplant didn't
just change his musical tastes.

It also changed
his vocabulary.

Bill Wohl:
And it's really funny.

I can tell you,
as a cutthroat businessman,

the surfer lingo and "dude"
did not fit into my character.

William Shatner:
He also found he was copying

Michaels' taste
for healthy food.

Bill Wohl:
He was a health nut.

He was very big on salads.

In the old days,
if there weren't French fries,

if there wasn't a steak

or a lobster tail
or something fried,

it wasn't gonna happen.

Now, once in a while,
as a treat,

I'll have something like that,
but I actually love salads.

William Shatner:
Most astonishingly,

Bill's new heart transformed him
from an overweight couch potato

into a
physical fitness freak,

just like Brady Michaels.

Bill believes that in
taking Brady Michaels' heart,

he has taken
some of Michaels' personality.

I'm living with a part of him
that he's blessed me,

and with that blessing

has come some ideas
and thoughts and characteristics

that have kind of melded

and become a part
of my everyday life.

Well, this is all very weird.

I told you it was weird.

A guy gets a heart transplant,
and he believes he got a bonus.

He got the donor's
personality, too.

And it's more
than the heart.

Think about it.

There are thousands of other
transplants done each year --

lungs, kidneys, livers.

If this guy is right,

are those people getting

their donor's
personalities as well?

Is this even possible?

Bill Wohl's remarkable story

suggests something that
common sense says cannot be.

Could our organs
really store

the essence of our being?

Can one person's body
assimilate the personality

of someone
long since dead?

Psychology Professor
Dr. Gary Schwartz thinks so.

If all tissues could store
information and energy,

then, if tissue
was removed from one person

and was surgically
placed in another,

there would be a transplant
not only of the matter

but of the memory as well.

William Shatner:
Schwartz has researched

the transfer of memory
for 30 years

and has tracked down
some 70 cases

of similar donor stories.

Gary Schwartz:
I have seen

too many cases
of uncanny and accurate

parallels
for me to question

whether there's
a phenomena here.

William Shatner:
In 1988, Claire Sylvia
received the heart and lungs

of a young man who died
in a motorcycle accident.

After the operation,

she develops
a new taste for beer,

green peppers
and chicken nuggets --

things her former self
would never have eaten.

The donor's parents
tell her that their son, Tim,

loved nothing more than beer
and green peppers,

and, chillingly,

on the night Tim died,

he was riding his motorcycle
with a box of chicken nuggets

in his pocket.

There are examples
from Bill's case

which indicate
the specificity,

above and beyond simple
changes in diet or exercise

which a lot of
people might do

because they had
a heart transplant.

William Shatner:
Can't these personality changes

be explained as a reaction
to a brush with death,

or even as side effects

of the powerful
anti-rejection drugs

used after
transplant surgery?

The first thing
one wants to entertain

are conventional explanations,

like side effects
of the drugs,

stress of the surgery

or just changes
in philosophy of life.

They're given
drugs and medication

to tame down
their immune system,

and most of the
side effects and toxicity

come from these
immunosuppressant drugs

that reduce the response
of the body to the new organ.

A side effect of a steroid
might change people's

anxiety level,
or it might change,

maybe,
a certain food preference,

but it's going to be
random in relationship

to the preferences
and personality of the donor.

I don't think
the anti-rejection drugs,

as toxic as they may be,

could explain
the specific information

that gets transferred.

That would
have to be pure luck

or some actual mechanism
of transference

from the donor
to the recipient.

William Shatner:
So, it appears to be

too much of a coincidence
to be the drugs.

Dr. Stuart Hameroff
has a radical theory

that suggests
something almost beyond belief.

Can the human heart

actually store our memories?

♪

William Shatner:
Bill Wohl has undergone

a seemingly
supernatural transformation --

a heart transplant he believes
changed his personality,

his tastes,
even his memories

into those of his donor,

all-action Hollywood stuntman
Brady Michaels.

Could something
that appears

straight from
a horror movie

actually be real?

Dr. Stuart Hameroff has a
radical theory about how memory

is stored
in the human body.

It's not only the brain
that can store memory.

We have muscle memory.

We learn to play tennis,
and there's information stored

in the nerves
that control the muscles,

and the heart
has a lot of neurons.

Outside the brain,

it's one of the largest
collections of neurons

in the body.

The nodes that control
the beating of the heart

and the conduction
and the synchrony of the muscles

so the heart beats together,
synchronously,

are a fairly
substantial complex of neurons.

William Shatner:
Neurons are specialized cells

that transmit information

via electrical impulses
and chemical signals

throughout
the body's nervous system.

The information they carry
allows us to move, think,

learn and feel.

Most neuroscientists
believe that long-term memories

are stored exclusively
by neurons in the brain.

Dr. Hameroff
has a more radical theory.

He believes memories
can also be stored by neurons

in other parts of the body,

within a cellular structure
called a microtubule.

Microtubules seem to be

the most likely site
for memory to be housed

because we know that
in Alzheimer's disease,

where you lose memory,

it's the microtubules in the
brain neurons that fall apart.

So, there's a number
of avenues of evidence

that lead to the fact

that the microtubules
are housing and storing memory.

But it would be
focused and more prevalent

in parts of the body
that had the most neurons,

the most microtubules --

namely the brain and the big
nervous ganglia like the heart.

William Shatner:
If Dr. Hameroff is right,

memories can be stored
by microtubules in the brain,

the heart
and the spinal cord --

or anywhere else
there are neurons.

This could explain why,

when Bill Wohl
got a heart transplant,

he got
a memory transplant, too.

Dr. Hameroff came to
his theory of memory, initially,

by studying neurons
in anesthesia

and then
extending that to other organs,

particularly the heart.

So, he's looking at
a very special case

of how a particular component
of a cell can have memory,

and I wouldn't
disagree with him.

Throughout human history,

poets and philosophers
have invested the heart

with powers and meaning
beyond that of a simple organ.

In Papua, New Guinea,

victorious warrior tribes

would consume
the hearts of the vanquished

to absorb their qualities.

In the arts,

the heart
has always been seen

as the source
of all love and passion.

"Who could refrain,
that had a heart to love,

"and in that heart,
courage to make love known?"

That's Shakespeare.

The heart is
central to our culture,

and it is
our own centre.

From the heart,
everything flows.

Now,
some scientists believe

the heart literally
has a mind of its own.

But could memory
and intelligence be found

in more than
our hearts and heads?

Could it be coursing

through our whole bodies?

Dr. Schwartz's theory
takes things a step further.

He thinks memory
can be stored in all cells

throughout the body,

not just the neurons,

thanks to
something called...

"feedback."

Feedback is the essence
of learning and memory.

Now, that same feedback process
operates at any level.

It's what operates
within the neurons

that allow the neurons
to learn between them.

But that same feedback that
allows the neuron cells to learn

is feedback
that can operate

within the
interconnected network of cells

in the heart
or the lungs or any other organ.

William Shatner:
Feedback occurs
when a past event

influences the response
to the same event

in the present or future.

According to Schwartz,
this loop

allows individual cells
to have a sort of memory.

That's another thing
about these feedback loops

is recurrent process.

Each time you repeat
the process over and over again,

it makes
the memory stronger.

William Shatner:
Could our individual cells

have a form of memory?

Schwartz believes they do,

and, what's more,
he thinks he can prove it.

We typically
think of muscle memory

as being mostly the brain,

but it turns out

the muscles have
the potential to learn as well,

because
all muscles have feedback,

ergo feedback memory

and muscle memory
in the muscles themselves.

William Shatner:
Schwartz can show
this principle in action.

A person is able
to train his muscles

to shoot basketball hoops,
using feedback,

so that he continues
to hit the basket

even when blindfolded.

According to Schwartz,

it is not just groups of tissue
that can have memories.

He thinks it is possible

that every single
cell in the body

can store information.

Gary Schwartz:
Since feedback loops

are operating at
every level in the body,

at every level,
there's gonna be,

theoretically,
memory and,

to various degrees,
learning,

at every level
in the body.

William Shatner:
Although unproven,

this theory
could help explain

the cases
of transplant recipients

who report receiving
the donor's memories,

tastes and behaviour

along with their new organ.

Interesting but,
unfortunately, all theoretical.

Maybe, to find
the answer to this mystery,

we should take a look
at a different organ --

the human brain.

Maybe, just maybe,

now that Bill has
his new heart and his health,

it's gone to his head.

Could getting
a new lease on life

convince you that you
are a whole new person?

Bill doesn't think
it's all that simple.

Certainly,
just getting a transplant

and a second chance at life

changed me
in a major way,

but I also totally believe

that certain
characteristics of my donor

have become
a basic part of my life,

and I feel that this is

the cellular memory
that's changed my life

and, I honestly feel,
made me a better person,

a happier person.

And I actually love, now,
caring and helping and wanting

to make a difference.

William Shatner:
Most neuroscientists
remain skeptical

that cellular memory
exists at all.

Nevertheless,
Bill Wohl believes

memories,
just like organs,

can be transplanted.

One thing is true.

Bill's experiences have
definitely been...

weird, or what.

Across the planet,

a strange phenomenon is
appearing in lakes and rivers --

perfect circles of ice,
some so big,

they're visible from space.

Are these ice circles
forming naturally,

or is this
some kind of elaborate hoax?

Now, for the first time,

scientists plan
to uncover the truth.

♪

Pie --

warm, round,

delicious.

Simply nothing weird
at all here,

but this got me
thinking about pi.

No, not, not,
not this pie --

the number pi.

You need the number pi
to explain the simple circle.

And just like the simple,
round, delicious pie,

when you dig deeper,
it gets more complicated.

Pi is a constant --

the ratio of any circle's
circumference to its diameter.

But that ratio
can be calculated forever

without coming
to a final decimal.

Circles,

they start off
looking so simple,

but when you
get down to it,

they're really complicated.

On December 13th, 2007,

amateur photographer
Brook Tyler was walking through

Rattray Marsh Conservation Area,
Southern Ontario.

Brook Tyler:
Well I love to do
nature photography,

landscapes, primarily,

and creeks
and waterfalls

and anything
that's sort of remote

and off the beaten path.

William Shatner:
When he got to Sheridan Creek,

Brook saw
something bizarre, majestic

and totally unexplained.

Brook Tyler:
Well, I was coming down here

to see what
the creek looked like,

and as I was coming around
the boardwalk over there,

I happened to see it.

It was about 6',
maybe a little bit more,

in diameter,
and it was turning.

William Shatner:
Brook had stumbled upon

a strange, beautiful
and mysterious phenomenon.

Brook Tyler:
I was really amazed.

It was so cool --

a perfectly round circle,
inscribed in the ice.

So, I set up my camera

and started shooting.

William Shatner:
Brook posted the photo
on the internet,

and,
after 150,000 hits,

he quickly learned
that ice circles

were a global mystery,

found across the US,

Canada, Europe, Russia.

But what,

or who,
was creating them?

To Tyler,
the similarity

to a famous
English hoax seemed obvious.

Brook Tyler:
Well, I entitled
my photograph Creek Circle --

a takeoff on crop circle --

because the crop circles

are obviously
a little bit mysterious.

Perfectly round circles
forming naturally in the ice --

come on!

It's too good
to be true, right?

Too perfect, too weird.

Surely,
someone is messing with us,

creating ice circles

like they would
create crop circles?

For over two decades,
strange geometrical designs,

known as crop circles,
appeared in British farmland.

In 1991, two men admitted
they were behind the hoax.

They created
these amazing patterns

with little more
than a length of rope

and a plank of wood.

So, could the ice circles
be the handiwork

of human hoaxers,

just like
many crop circles

turned out to be?

It's impossible for somebody
to generate these circles.

Uh, the ice is very,
very thin,

very delicate,
very, very fragile,

and you try and put
any sort of thing

to cut the ice,

you're gonna
leave evidence of it,

or you're gonna have to
somehow be standing in the ice,

or standing in the water,

to be able
to hold whatever tool

that you have
to cut the circle.

So, I wouldn't--

It's not--

It's Mother Nature
doing her finest.

William Shatner:
Len Zabilansky is an engineer

at the Cold Regions Research
and Engineering Laboratory

in New Hampshire.

Their research
helps the US military

operate in cold climates.

Ice is nice.

This is what we do,
day in and day out.

We have three facilities here
that we replicate

the different processes,

the ice processes,
in different phases.

We're in the test basin,
where we do flat ice, sheet ice.

We have another facility where
we bring a river system inside,

and then we have a large
general research area.

William Shatner:
Len sees a fundamental problem

facing people
wanting to hoax an ice circle.

Because ice floats on top

of the flowing river,
there's no support below.

Len Zabilansky:
The ice has no strength,
and so, he has to basically

stand in mid-air
to be able to do this,

and that's
physically impossible.

William Shatner:
Zabilansky believes these
perfect ice circles are formed

by a unique combination
of natural processes,

and,
for the first time,

using a unique experiment,
he intends to prove it.

Len Zabilansky:
The way the ice circle's formed
is basically in a back eddy.

The ice will
follow the water,

and if the water
goes in a circle,

so will the ice.

Back eddies can be found
on bends in rivers

where a constriction

forces some of the water
to flow back on itself,

creating a rotating pool.

So, the theory goes
that in the winter,

when ice flows
into an eddy,

it too becomes
a part of the rotation

and begins to
grow and grow outward,

until it grinds against
the surrounding static ice,

like a gristmill,

creating the perfect,
beautiful ice circle.

And what happens
in the winter environment --

ice that's coming down

into this backwater area,

actually
goes around as well,

and, as the ice is contributing
into this background,

it continues to grow
in a larger and larger circle.

If you look at ice circles
that we've had pictures of,

it looks like
a vinyl record,

because everything
is all very circular

with different
little ridges around.

So, what's happening
is the ice is coming down,

bangs into the circle,
and it just sort of squashes in,

and you get
a little ridge,

and that ridge just keeps
building up in time

and getting
larger and larger

and larger and larger,
in diameter.

William Shatner:
Like a gristmill,

the rotating ice circles

grind against
the surrounding ice,

creating a
perfectly round circle

and its mirror image.

Len Zabilansky:
The two pieces will sort of
nest together with a little bit

of open water between them.

You can see
there's a very narrow gap,

but you can actually see
the milling process

actually taking place.

William Shatner:
Len believes this is
exactly what happened to create

the ice circle
in Brook Tyler's photo.

This is more--

This is the
kind of ice circle

that we're
going to duplicate today.

William Shatner:
What are these
mysterious circles of ice?

Are they
a natural process of nature?

Can they be
recreated in a lab,

or does the answer
to this bizarre mystery

lie beyond our planet?

♪

William Shatner:
A weird phenomenon is
appearing in lakes and rivers --

perfect circles of ice.

Some so big,
they're visible from space.

What are they?

At the Cold Regions

Research and Engineering
Laboratory in New Hampshire,

engineer Len Zabilansky
intends to find out,

with an experiment that has
never been attempted before --

recreating the conditions

that he believes will lead to
the creation of an ice circle.

Len Zabilansky:
What we've created here

is the river process
that would be--

That would contribute to
the formation of an ice circle.

William Shatner:
In a temperature-controlled
laboratory,

Len has recreated
the prevailing

physical and environmental
conditions that existed

when Brook Tyler
photographed the ice circle.

The water is coming from
our upstream reach of the river.

It's coming down,
past where we have

more water coming into
this section of the river

than we can
actually allow to leave,

to sort of create
a backwater eddy.

What happens is
the water coming into our eddy,

our hydraulic section,

is less than the water
that we're allowing to release

from our control section,

so we're
continually recirculating.

That's the
recirculating section.

And so, a little bit
of the water will come out,

but the ice
will actually stay in

and continue to circulate.

William Shatner:
The back eddy is
a rotating pool of water

Len believes is needed to
trap and grow ice into a circle.

Len Zabilansky:
We're generating

small snow crystals that are
settling on the water surface,

and that's what
we're using to initiate ice.

And as the ice forms and creates
and circulates around,

we're controlling the amount
of ice that we're generating,

so we're not
plugging up the system.

William Shatner:
The snow acts like a seed
and helps ice crystals

to form
in the flowing water.

Len Zabilansky:
And one submersible pump,

and as
the water comes around,

it just shoots it forward,
along with the ice,

down into our eddy section.

William Shatner:
The experiment begins.

Will Len's river
form an elusive ice circle?

Len Zabilansky:
See, there's a piece of ice

that just started
spinning around in our circle.

It will continue to build,
and as it continues to rotate,

ice that's coming from upstream
may accumulate on the edge,

and that's why you're gonna
start seeing these ridges.

At first, the ice in the
back eddy grows as predicted,

but it isn't forming
as a uniform disc.

It's ice but nowhere near
the perfect ice circles

he is trying to recreate.

We just jammed it!

William Shatner:
Joe Desloges

is a fluvial geomorphologist,
or river expert.

He believes
he has a better theory

to explain
this weird quirk of nature.

Let's not assume
the most wild, to start with,

and let's start thinking
about the true explanations

that really help
understand these.

And that is the science.

William Shatner:
But can science explain

the three-mile wide ice circle
in Russia's Lake Baikal?

Joe Desloges: Features,
from space, look fantastic,

but when you're
actually on the ground,

you get a better sense

of what's likely
to be controlling them --

and probably
a different perception,

entirely, about what
the composition of them are

and what they're made of.

So, the best science
really requires you

to be out in the field.

William Shatner:
Joe has spent years

studying how rivers
behave in cold regions

like Canada and Scandinavia.

Well,
cold climates are fantastic,

in terms of water
and the way water freezes.

Uh, you can see
a whole range of shapes,

but one of
the most common is circular.

William Shatner:
Joe believes there's
another natural process

that forms
frozen circles on a river.

It's called frazil ice.

Joe Desloges:
Frazil ice forms in rivers
when the water cools

to a point where you begin
forming these ice crystals,

or we call them ice nuclei.

The process
is called supercooling,

when water is just slightly

below the freezing temperature
and these nuclei begin to form.

As the tiny ice crystals
start to collide,

they grow into
larger clumps of frazil ice.

Ice is lighter than water,

so, as the clumps grow,
the more buoyant they become.

Joe Desloges:
And as they
float to the surface,

they tend to form
these nice, circular ice pans.

So, they actually look like
a rather weird phenomenon

on a river's surface.

William Shatner:
It's a promising theory,
but Joe's ice pans

don't look like the spinning,
perfect ice circles

Brook Tyler
photographed in Ontario.

Back at the US Army

Cold Regions Research
and Engineering Laboratory,

Len Zabilansky
is still having difficulty

creating an ice circle
in the lab.

It's possible the rate
of freezing is too slow,

meaning new ice

isn't filling in the gaps
to make a circular shape.

So, that just shows you
how delicate this process is,

when Mother Nature's
generating these ice circles.

William Shatner:
Len decides to drop
the ambient temperature.

Len Zabilansky:
We've just dropped
the temperature two degrees,

and we're generating more ice,
and it's freezing faster.

William Shatner:
The experiment begins again.

This time,

the colder temperature
is helping build the ice

as quickly as it is
melted or eroded away.

Len Zabilansky:
You can see that
some of the ice

is starting to freeze
into a circle.

William Shatner:
As Len predicted,
the ice is growing,

thanks to new ice crystals
joining from upstream

and sheet ice growing
out from the circle itself.

If we let this run
for another six to 12 hours,

that ice will become
very, very strong.

William Shatner:
Allowing his man-made river
to flow for hours,

Len hopes his experiment

will produce
a genuine ice circle.

The results are remarkable.

Len Zabilansky:
This is the first time
we've created

an ice circle
of this quality in the lab.

Sometimes,
we've been able to kick out.

Sometimes,
we almost had it,

but this is
the first one

that's actually
starting to become circular,

because it's
starting to be mature.

William Shatner:
For the first time,

Zabilansky has shown
one way ice circles can form.

But many of these
beautiful natural phenomena

remain mysterious,
and not just on earth.

In 2010,

NASA discovered
circular grooves,

hundreds of miles wide,

etched into
the surface of Europa,

Jupiter's ice-bound moon.

And that, for now,

will remain
weird, or what?

A mother undergoes
a routine DNA test.

The results are
seemingly beyond reason.

She has two sets of DNA.

Is it a cruel mistake,

or is it possible
for the genetic information

of two different people
to exist in the same body?

Weird, or what?

♪

Four unremarkable letters --

A, T, G and C --

that's all there are
in our DNA alphabet.

Take these four letters,
multiply them by billions

and arrange them
in a unique sequence

long enough to fill hundreds
of telephone directories,

and you have
one strand of DNA --

the source of the information
that makes you you and me me.

But what if
someone examined your DNA

and revealed that you were not
who you thought you were

and, in fact,

you were sharing your body
with someone else?

In 2002,
Lydia Fairchild,

mother to four children
fathered by her partner,

Jamie Townsend,

applied for state benefits
to help raise

her young family.

In accordance with state law,

Lydia and her children
had DNA tests

to prove parentage.

At conception,
we inherit

half our DNA from our mother
and half from our father.

When all is normal,
every child will have

a genetic inheritance
that can be easily traced

to both parents.

But Lydia's DNA results

would prove to be
far from normal.

Lydia Fairchild:
I got a call,

and the prosecutor

had asked
that I come up to the office.

He started asking, like,

was I trying to do fraud

by getting help
from the state,

"because these kids
aren't yours,"

and I stopped him
for a minute.

I was like, "What do you mean
these kids aren't mine?"

And he says,
"Well, the tests came back.

"Jamie is the father
of all the kids,

"but you are not the mother."

William Shatner:
The tests were
repeated twice more,

but, both times,
the results were the same.

Jamie was the father.

None of the four children
appeared to be related to Lydia.

I was so scared.

They said that they were
gonna take it to court

because they didn't find
that I was telling the truth.

They thought I was lying.

William Shatner:
The state prosecutor
started an investigation,

and Lydia found herself
in front of a judge.

Lydia Fairchild:
The judge looked at me,

and he says,
"Are these your children?"

And I said,
"Yes, they are.

"You know,
I got pregnant.

"I carried them;
I delivered them.

"The doctor has ultrasounds
of them being in my stomach."

The judge said,
"You opened a big can of worms."

He's like, "We don't know
what's going on here,

"but we're gonna
figure it out."

Despite overwhelming evidence
supporting Lydia's claim,

four DNA tests show that
she is not the biological mother

of the children
she gave birth to.

But why?

First and most obvious
reason to be explored --

the possibility
that the DNA tests

could be wrong.

To be told that DNA
is essentially foolproof

is very problematic.

William Shatner:
Dr. Kerry Bowman

specializes
in the ethics of medicine.

Kerry Bowman:
Many people in medicine,

and I'm one of them,

would say nothing in medicine
is a hundred percent.

It can get close to it,
but it's not a hundred percent.

The talk, though, with DNA,
is that there's an exception

and that DNA is virtually
foolproof as a testing strategy,

when, in fact,
they may be rare,

but there are
exceptions to that.

So, in fact,
did Lydia

really have
a fair consent process?

I would say not.

William Shatner:
Parental DNA tests themselves

are more than 99% accurate,

but humans can
and do make mistakes.

Had this happened
to Lydia's tests?

Perhaps, somehow,
the samples got screwed up.

Maybe they mixed up her DNA
samples with some other woman's,

and then,
when they tested it,

of course, it would show
that it wasn't her kid.

And my first goal was
I was gonna ask the court

to order a whole new set of
DNA tests that were separate --

a new laboratory to do it --

to see if
the second laboratory

came back
with the same problem.

William Shatner:
Medical mix-ups do happen.

In 2002, Linda McDougal
from Woodville, Wisconsin,

was diagnosed
with breast cancer

and underwent
a double mastectomy.

However,
two days after the operation,

doctors told Linda
it had all been a mistake.

Her biopsy results

had been accidentally switched
with another patient's.

Linda never had cancer,

and so, the surgery
had been completely unnecessary.

Did a similar human error
skew Lydia's DNA results,

or is the real answer
to this mystery

beyond anything medical science
has ever imagined?

So, what is going on?

Another theory suggests

that Lydia could have
given birth to her children

and yet not have been
their biological mother.

It is speculated

that Lydia
was an IVF surrogate.

So, what a
surrogate pregnancy is

is what used to be called
test tube babies --

when egg and sperm

are introduced
outside the womb,

in a lab condition.

Put together,
they create an embryo,

and that embryo
is then put into

the uterus
of a surrogate mother.

So, this woman has no biological
relationship to the child

that she is carrying
and will eventually bear.

William Shatner:
But why would Lydia
have carried the fertilized eggs

of another woman
four times over?

It certainly
wouldn't benefit fraud.

Kerry Bowman:
IVF itself

is extremely expensive,

and to speak
in American dollars,

you could
easily be talking about

$30,000 or $50,000.

And how someone
like Lydia Fairchild

would want
or could possibly do this

to create
some kind of welfare scam,

I can't even imagine
how that would work.

The costs simply don't line up
to whatever benefits, um,

someone could pull from this,
in terms of a welfare scam.

It doesn't make any sense.

William Shatner:
And as Dr. Chitayat explains,

IVF is not something
that can be done at home.

David Chitayat:
It's impossible
to do in your kitchen,

in-vitro fertilization.

You have to stimulate
the ovary of the mother,

and you have to make sure
that you don't over-stimulate,

because then it will produce
huge cysts in the ovary

and can cause her to have
dehydration and even death.

So, it has to be
monitored very carefully

by expert in this field.

William Shatner:
There's an even bigger
problem with this theory.

The father of all four
of Lydia's children

had been confirmed
as her partner,

Jamie Townsend.

Alan Tindell:
It wasn't logical

that somebody would hire Lydia
to carry a surrogacy

and then have them all
fathered by Jamie Townsend.

Why would they pick him?

And besides that,
the children didn't go off

to live with
the contracting people

who had hired Lydia
to be a surrogate.

It was just illogical.

I mean, it could have been
an explanation that she was a--

That she was
a surrogate parent,

but I'd asked her,

"Was there
any surrogacy contract

"between you
and anybody else?"

"No."

She was adamant she was not
a surrogate parent for anybody.

William Shatner:
The obvious answers
were exhausted.

Here was a case
that made no sense to anyone.

But a new theory
was about to emerge --

an explanation
for Lydia's DNA results

as fantastically rare

as it was
biologically extraordinary.

♪

William Shatner:
Lydia Fairchild is
a biological marvel.

In 2002,
routine DNA tests

taken for an application
for US state benefits

revealed she is

genetically unrelated
to her own children.

This outcome
was so incredible that,

at first, it was
believed to have been a mistake,

or that she was
somehow involved

in an elaborate fraud.

None of the theories
seemed plausible,

and the case seemed destined

to remain as mysterious
as it was bizarre,

until Lydia's attorney
discovered something

almost too weird
to be believed --

a description
in a medical journal

of a rare and almost
unheard of genetic condition

only known to affect

around 40 people
in the whole world,

something called
tetragametic chimerism.

He was doing a little

trolling on the internet,

and he wondered if maybe
it fit our scenario.

So, I read it,

as much of it
as I could understand,

but it sounded very much
like what we were dealing with.

So, I contacted
Doctor Kruskall,

who was one of
the authors of the paper --

she's now deceased --

and, um, introduced myself
on the phone and said,

I think,
"I read your article.

"I think I have
a case very much like it."

Of course,
they were intrigued about it.

I said, "Could I send you
the test results we have,

"and maybe you can
give us some insight

"into what's happening here?"

William Shatner:
One way a chimera can form

is when two separate eggs
are fertilized by two sperm

and then merge
to form a single embryo.

Put simply,
it's two non-identical twins,

merging,
very early on in pregnancy.

Their two sets of DNA
are then intermingled

throughout the body.

If Lydia Fairchild
was a chimera,

it could explain
how her biological children

have different DNA.

They would have
inherited one set of DNA

from one area
of her body,

while the
laboratory sampled

other areas
that contained a completely

different set of DNA.

The problem with chimerism
is that you have to actually

do biopsies
from different body organs --

liver, kidney,
intestine, perhaps --

and find out
if all of them contain

the same genetic material
as we check in the blood.

William Shatner:
Lydia was sent back
for more DNA tests.

This time, they took samples
from all over her body.

And my hair,
blood and swabs from my cheek

came back
as the same DNA,

but my cervical smear
came back as a different DNA,

and it was actually the DNA
that matched my children.

The chimera theory
was confirmed.

Incredibly,

Lydia Fairchild
has two sets of DNA,

the DNA in Lydia's ovaries
being completely different

from the DNA found
in the rest of her body.

David Chitayat:
Lydia Fairchild shows

that DNA testing,

fingerprinting,
may not be perfect.

So, what happened in her

was that
the ovaries were produced

by different cells
than the cells that produced

the white blood cells
and the platelets in her blood.

Lydia Fairchild:
And your ovaries are
what holds your eggs.

So, when your egg comes down
and then you get pregnant,

your child is gonna carry
the DNA that's in your ovaries.

William Shatner:
Amazingly, Lydia's children

had inherited their DNA

from the non-identical twin
that Lydia's embryo fused with

just after
Lydia was conceived.

There was
a final court hearing,

and the judge,

he granted me my children,

that I am
the biological mom of my kids,

and I remember crying
so bad that I finally won,

after all that
fighting I did.

I believe it was two-and-a-half
years I fought for my kids

to keep them in my life.

William Shatner:
Lydia's world
had been changed forever.

She is one of only
about 40 people on the planet

known to be a chimera.

Lydia Fairchild:
If I never did that DNA test

to determine if he was
the father or not,

I would never have known today
that I was chimera.

I mean,
I would never know.

William Shatner:
Doctors believe
there are many more, as yet,

unidentified
chimeras out there.

Could someone you know

have an extra set of DNA

they got from
their own embryonic twin

without them even knowing it?

Weird, or what?

So, there we have it --

three weird stories,

each with
several competing theories.

A man undergoes a life-saving
heart transplant procedure

but gets more
than he bargained for --

a new organ

and a new personality.

Is this simply psychological
or the side effects

of medicinal drugs?

Or can the heart or even
individual human cells

store a person's memories

and characteristics?

Around the world,

perfect, beautiful,
spinning circles of ice

forming in
lakes and rivers --

are they the winter cousins
of the infamous crop circle?

Or does science
have the answers?

A mother is revealed to be

genetically unrelated
to her own children.

Is she trying
to commit fraud,

or is she the victim
of a series of DNA mix-ups,

or are we
dealing with a rare

and extraordinary
genetic oddity?

Join me next time
for more stories

that will undoubtedly be...

weird, or what?