By April MacIntyre Nov 18, 2009, 4:23 GMT
National Geographic Channel’s Explorer Follows Trail of Fugitive “Angel of Death” premieres Sunday, November 29, 2009, at 9 PM ET/PT.
Almost 50 sets of blond hair and blue eyed twins live in a tiny town deep in the Brazilian outback.
The rate of twins in the town is nearly a thousand percent above the global average.
The theory that this phenomenon is the work of infamous Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele, who took his obsession with engineering an Aryan master race to South America, made global headlines. Now, the largest investigation to date seeks to solve the mystery once and for all.
On Sunday, November 29, 2009, at 9 PM ET/PT, National Geographic Channel’s Explorer: Nazi Mystery: Twins from Brazil uncovers the truth behind the unusual number of twins in the town of Cândido Godói, Brazil.
Is it really possible Mengele’s hideous experiments at Auschwitz bore fruit in Brazil as Camarasa believes? Or did Mengele have nothing to do with the town, as the world’s pre-eminent authority on the Nazi criminal, Gerald Posner ― who’s examined just about every top secret document filed under Mengele’s name across South America ― is unequivocally convinced?
With exclusive access to the largest investigation into the phenomenon, join a team as they analyze the blood of the town’s mothers, hunt possible environmental abnormalities and track down every case of twins. All in an exhaustive attempt to determine if Mengele’s efforts to engineer an Aryan master race continued, and succeeded, while he was on the run in South America.
Background from Explorer:
Known as “The Angel of Death,” Joseph Mengele not only sent some 400,000 men, women and children to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, but collected some 3,000 pairs of twins and countless pregnant women for a set of bizarre medical experiments — experiments that experts believe aimed to fulfill Adolf Hitler’s fantasy of engineering a highly fertile Aryan master race.
By some accounts Mengele became obsessed with finding a way to trigger twins so mothers could efficiently give birth to an endless procession of blond-haired, blue-eyed babies.
After WWII, Mengele escaped to South America, where the details of his life became a mystery. Journalist Jorge Camarasa grabbed headlines around the world earlier this year with the publication of a book claiming that Mengele posed as a traveling veterinarian and physician who visited Cândido Godói and administered unknown pharmaceuticals that may have triggered twins in the town’s women and livestock.
In this episode of Explorer, we’ll hear firsthand from town elders who claim to have met Mengele and see aging photos of local children holding Nazi flags. Former Israeli Mossad agent Rafi Eitan, a legendary spy who tailed Mengele while he was on the run in the 1960s, reveals details about Mengele’s life and his whereabouts in South America.
To prove Mengele’s role once and for all, Explorer: Nazi Mystery: Twins from Brazil follows the largest investigation into the twin phenomenon. Experts analyze a local spring to determine if it contains unusual substances that could affect reproduction. Then a team of Brazilian scientists led by Lavinia Shuler-Faccini and Ursula Matte collect personal information and samples from mothers who have given birth to twins.
Dr. Gary Steinman, an expert on the effect of hormone treatments on the rates of twins in both cattle and humans, analyzes the blood work. Dr Steinman’s investigation seeks telltale signs of growth hormones that can correlate to a higher rate of twinning, a connection Mengele may have discovered while performing experiments on town’s women some 50 years earlier. Next, the team drills into the genetic legacy, archives and graveyards of the community to search for the origin of inheritance patterns and genetic mutations that might offer a scientific breakthrough.
The results of this investigation are expected to be completed later this month and will be released in conjunction with the program.
For more information visit natgeotv.com/explorer.
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