Genetic Manipulation by Aliens or Simply Roberts Syndrome?

Most rational people would never believe genetic manipulation by extraterrestrials has ever taken place on Earth. In other words, if you told a friend you thought aliens had visited our planet with the intention of creating alien-human hybrids, they most likely would suggest you double up on your medication as soon as possible. But if you showed them a picture of the creature that was born to a German woman by the name of Johanna Sophia Schmied in the year 1735, they just might believe you have adequate evidence to support your bizarre claim.

In a museum in Waldenburg, Germany, the creature that 28-year old Johanna gave birth to is still preserved in a 16-inch jar of formaldehyde.

And it very much resembles an alien.

Or at least how aliens are portrayed in movies.

The creature has an extremely large head with a massive protuberance in the forehead region (the head had been completely filled with brain tissue despite its tremendous size.) It has tiny arms and legs that contain only one bone in the forearm and lower leg regions, instead of the normal two. Its hands and feet are fully formed, yet its fingernails are animal-like and the toes distorted. Its huge eye sockets are deep and menacing and spaced widely apart. It has a small, almost nonexistent nose, while its lipless mouth gapes open almost as large as one of its eye sockets.

The baby was stillborn, had no kneecaps, and its heart was enclosed in a thin membrane instead of the normal heart sac (pericardium). It had a large liver, kidneys that varied in size, and no external genitalia. Taking more than seven hours to deliver, the baby's abnormalities were plentiful and gruesome enough that many fringe groups still believe it is genuine evidence that aliens visited Germany in the 1730s with the harrowing intention of creating alien-human hybrids.

A doctor based in Leipzig by the name of Gottlieb Friderici performed an autopsy on the creature, and afterward composed a 32-paged report titled "Monstrum Hvmanvm Rarissimvm." The report was written entirely in Latin and detailed the many deformities of the "unhappy monster." Dr. Friderici even hired a draftsman to make elaborate drawings of the creature's strange anatomy. Because its limbs were so short, the doctor compared them to the wings of a chicken without feathers, and today the baby born to Mrs. Schmied is sometimes referred to as "The Chicken Man." When Dr. Friderici finished his dissection, he placed the baby in a jar of formaldehyde, which you can still see if you ever visit the Waldenburg museum in Germany.

So is the creature actual evidence of genetic manipulation by aliens? Could extraterrestrials really have visited us with the intention of replacing human beings with alien-human hybrids? Of course it is highly unlikely. What is more probable is that the baby had a genetic disorder called Roberts syndrome. Roberts syndrome is a rare disorder characterized by abnormalities of the face and skull along with extreme malformations of the limbs (some babies are born entirely without arms or legs). These abnormalities are caused by delays in the normal growth process before and after birth. Mental retardation is also common. In his report, Friderici described Johanna Schmied as being short, stocky, and having a melancholic temperament. She had been married to a "hunchback" for ten years, and previously they'd had three healthy children before she gave birth to the one suspected of having Roberts syndrome.

But because many consider the creature described in Dr. Friderici's report to be the first documented case of Roberts syndrome, that does not actually prove aliens were never here experimenting with genetic engineering. Could Roberts syndrome be only the label doctors applied to the alien's failed experiments? How do we really prove no genetic engineering investigations have been conducted by extraterrestrials? Especially when Johanna Schmied gave birth to such an alien-looking creature?

My answer is that most likely the aliens would have continued their experiments after the "Chicken Man" failure, and they would have probably improved their techniques after years of practice. Eventually they would have increased their genetic engineering skills to such a level that they would have succeeded in producing some type of alien-human hybrid.

Then wouldn't we have seen the results?

Perhaps not.

Maybe the aliens took the successful hybrids back to their home planet. Or, going in the other direction, maybe it's physically impossible to produce an alien-human hybrid at all, and yet the extraterrestrials still keep attempting the procedure, but continue to get it wrong each time.

Perhaps one day we earthlings will know the real truth.