Black parents… white baby By Virginia Wheeler
- July 20th, 2010
- Posted in Current Events . History
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Black parents… white baby
Ihegboro with baby Nmachi
PETER SIMPSON & NEIL HALL
THE stunned black dad of a newborn, WHITE, baby girl declared yesterday — “I’m sure she’s my kid … I just don’t know why she’s BLONDE.”
British Nmachi Ihegboro has amazed genetics experts who say the little girl is NOT an albino.
Dad Ben, 44, a customer services adviser, admitted: “We both just sat there after the birth staring at her.”
Mum Angela, 35, of Woolwich, South London, beamed as she said: “She’s beautiful – a miracle baby.”
Ben told yesterday how he was so shocked when Nmachi was born, he even joked: “Is she MINE?”
PETER SIMPSON & NEIL HALL
He added: “Actually, the first thing I did was look at her and say, ‘What the flip?’”But as the baby’s older brother and sister – both black – crowded round the “little miracle” at their home in South London, Ben declared: “Of course she’s mine.”
Blue-eyed blonde Nmachi, whose name means “Beauty of God” in the Nigerian couple’s homeland, has baffled genetics experts because neither Ben nor wife Angela have ANY mixed-race family history.
Pale genes skipping generations before cropping up again could have explained the baby’s appearance.
Ben also stressed: “My wife is true to me. Even if she hadn’t been, the baby still wouldn’t look like that.
“We both just sat there after the birth staring at her for ages – not saying anything.”
Doctors at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup – where Angela, from nearby Woolwich, gave birth – have told the parents Nmachi is definitely no albino.
Ben, who came to Britain with his wife five years ago and works for South Eastern Trains, said: “She doesn’t look like an albino child anyway – not like the ones I’ve seen back in Nigeria or in books. She just looks like a healthy white baby.”
He went on: “My mum is a black Nigerian although she has a bit fairer skin than mine.
“But we don’t know of any white ancestry. We wondered if it was a genetic twist.
“But even then, what is with the long curly blonde hair?”
Professor Bryan Sykes, head of Human Genetics at Oxford University and Britain’s leading expert, yesterday called the birth “extraordinary”.
He said: “In mixed race humans, the lighter variant of skin tone may come out in a child – and this can sometimes be startlingly different to the skin of the parents.
“This might be the case where there is a lot of genetic mixing, as in Afro-Caribbean populations. But in Nigeria there is little mixing.”
Prof Sykes said BOTH parents would have needed “some form of white ancestry” for a pale version of their genes to be passed on.
But he added: “The hair is extremely unusual. Even many blonde children don’t have blonde hair like this at birth.”
Nmachi to sister Dumebi and bruv Chisom yesterday
PETER SIMPSON & NEIL HALL
The expert said some unknown mutation was the most likely explanation.He admitted: “The rules of genetics are complex and we still don’t understand what happens in many cases.”
The amazing birth comes five years after Kylie Hodgson became mum to twin daughters – one white and the other black – in Nottingham.
Kylie, now 23, and her partner Remi Horder, now 21, are both mixed race.
Even so the odds were estimated at a million to one.
The Sun told in 2002 how a white couple had Asian twins after a sperm mix-up by a fertility clinic.
Yesterday three-day-old Nmachi’s churchgoing mum Angela admitted that she was “speechless” at first seeing her baby girl, who was delivered in a caesarean op.
She said: “I thought, ‘What is this little doll?’
“She’s beautiful and I love her. Her colour doesn’t matter. She’s a miracle baby.
“But still, what on earth happened here?”
Her husband told how their son Chisom, four, was even more confused than them by his new sister.
Ben said: “Our other daughter Dumebi is only two so she’s too young to understand.
“But our boy keeps coming to look at his sister and then sits down looking puzzled.
“We’re a black family. Suddenly he has a white sister.”
Ben continued: “Of course, we are baffled too and want to know what’s happened. But we understand life is very strange.
“All that matters is that she’s healthy and that we love her.She’s a proud British Nigerian.”
Queen Mary’s Hospital said: “Congratulations to Angela and her family on the birth of their daughter.”
myView
By PROF BRYAN SYKES
Oxford University
THIS sounds a very unusual case. Quite extraordinary.
All skin and eye colour are controlled by the pigment melanin.
And there are about a dozen genes that control the amount or type of melanin.
Even if there had been convergence of a pale version of the parents’ genes, there would have to be some form of white ancestry on both sides for the baby to look this way.
As albinoism has been ruled out, it is more likely that there has been some other mutation that’s happened to produce this colouring.
Without further tests, that is, in my opinion, the most rational explanation.
Health
Baby tale not black and white
By Clare Murphy Health reporter, BBC News
A white baby girl with a mop of blonde hair and blue eyes has been born to black parents living in London. How is this possible?
While there have been several cases of different coloured twins born to parents with mixed-race ancestry in recent years, Ben and Angela Ihegboro, who are originally from Nigeria, say they have no such origins which could explain the phenomenon that is their new daughter Nmachi.
In the case of Nmachi, there are three possible explanations of why she looks so very different from her older brother and sister, who are both black: dormant white genes which entered both of her parents’ families long ago, a genetic mutation unique to her, or albinism.
Contrary to reports, doctors at the London hospital where Nmachi was born say they have not ruled out this recessive disorder which affects skin pigmentation.
Mix and matchLike many human traits, a person’s colour is influenced by about 12 different genes, which together control the amount of pigment – or melanin – produced in the skin.
It is in principle at least possible that both parents carried light skin gene variants, inherited from unknown white ancestors on either side, which in their cases were masked by dark skin gene variants.
We are all of us genetic mixtures to some extent and occasionally you’ll have a convergence of the pale versions of these genes in African Americans and African Carribbeans who have a mixed black and white ancestry”
End Quote Professor Bryan Sykes University of Oxford
In this way, white parents can also produce a black child, as in the recently filmed biopic of Sandra Laing, the black baby born to Afrikaner parents at the height of apartheid in the mid-1950s.
In Europeans, it is possible – if highly unusual – that African DNA from those who were brought to the continent as Roman slaves joins in two fair parents to produce a dark-skinned child.
Under this theory, when Nmachi was conceived, she inherited both light skin genes which together give her this very fair appearance.
“We are all of us genetic mixtures to some extent and occasionally you’ll have a convergence of the pale versions of these genes in African Americans and African Carribbeans who have a mixed black and white ancestry,” says Bryan Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford.
“But that doesn’t seem to be the case here. The parents are Nigerians with little known white ancestry at all.”
What is more likely, he says, is a genetic mutation within the little girl herself which she will then pass on to her children if she has any in the future.
SunburnBut other experts point the finger firmly at albinism, a genetic disorder which in its most extreme form results in a complete lack of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes.
It ranges in severity from Type 1 to 4, with overall about one in 20,000 people born worldwide with some form of the condition.
Both parents could be carrying a copy of the albino gene without it having surfaced in any known family member for many years.
“This is perhaps one of the most common recessive disorders in Nigeria, and we have to remember that it comes in different forms,” says Professor Ian Jackson of Human Genetics Unit at the Medical Research Council.
“In Type 2 we would see creamy skin and yellow hair or light brown, which in some cases would darken with age.”
The principal health risks of albinism are problems with vision – ranging from the mild to the severe – and sun damage to the skin due to the lack of melanin, which protects against ultraviolet rays.
This is the key problem for those with the disorder in the scorching heat of Africa, potentially less so for a baby born in London – but care will still need to be taken with sunblock and hats.
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