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While a 92-year-old woman delivering a 60-year-old baby may sound like a bizarre plot twist from the movie “Benjamin Button,” it’s true. Huang Yijun, 92, of southern China, recently delivered a child which she’d been carrying for well over half a century.

The baby wasn’t alive, however. The woman was carrying a lithopedion — or stone baby. It’s a rare phenomenon that occurs when a pregnancy fails and the fetus calcifies while still in the mother’s body.

According to Dr. Natalie Burger, endocrinologist and fertility specialist at Texas Fertility Center, lithopedions start off as ectopic pregnancies, a condition where the fertilized egg gets stuck on its way to the womb, implants and develops outside the uterus.

“Usually an ectopic pregnancy will mean a [fallopian] tubal pregnancy, but in a small percentage of cases, the pregnancy can actually occur in the abdominal cavity — in places like the bowel, the ovary, or even on the aorta,” she says. “These are very rare locations and they can be very dangerous.”

In most cases, Burger says, doctors will recommend the pregnancy be terminated due to the extreme risk to the mother. Or the fetus will simply die on its own due to a lack of blood supply.

“The vast majority never get anywhere close to multiple months of pregnancy,” she says. “They die, the tissue breaks down and they’re gone.”

In certain cases, however, the implanted fetus gets to an advanced stage before it dies. Too large to be absorbed by the body, the remains of the child or its surrounding amniotic sac slowly calcify, turning to stone as a way to protect the woman’s body from infection from the decomposing tissue. Because the mother’s body doesn’t recognize the hardening mass as foreign, if there are no other complications she can basically just go on with her life.

Stone babies are extremely rare, but you wouldn’t know it considering how often they’ve been used as a plot device in novels, short stories and TV shows. For example, in recent years, they’ve shown up on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” “Nip/Tuck” and the Australian series, “All Saints.” Maybe calcified babies are so popular because they tap into a mythological fascination with or deep fear of a soft, innocent body turning to stone.

I’ve decided I need to take this site to the next level, the Web 2.0 Social Networking Level.  I want this to become a social network for fellow travelers.  I need your help, though.  I have some questions and would appreciate any feedback.  First, would you sign up for a free site like that (think facebook or myspace focused on traveling)?  Would you be willing to write about your own travel experiences and upload pictures and videos?

This is a project that should keep me real busy for the next month so don’t expect any changes before then.  The site went out for a few minutes today, but I got it right back up online on that thurr interwebs.  I’ll do my best to keep outages to a minimum.

Please comment with feedback and suggestions or questions.

Thanks!

So I’ve decided to add a new category to my blog: World News/Current Events. It’s important for people traveling to be aware of issues happening abroad where they may be thinking of traveling.

Afghanistan opened it’s first National Park today on Earth Day. The name of it is Band-e-Amir National Park, encompassing six high mountain-fed deep blue lakes held back by natural calcified dams. Afghanistan’s first national park is located in the country’s peaceful central highlands, the lakes were a popular tourist destination before the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule. Officials hope they can attract tourists from around the world once again.
Today’s signing in Afghanistan makes Band-e-Amir a provisional national park. The parliament must ratify the change in legislation in order for the national park status to become permanent.

For more information go to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30345963/

This has nothing to do with my personal travel experiences, thank God, but I thought that this is sick and awful so I decided to share it with you.  I found this posted on dailykos.com:

“A prominent Iraqi human rights activist says that Iraqi militia have deployed a painful form of torture against homosexuals by closing their anuses using ‘Iranian gum.’ … Yina Mohammad told Alarabiya.net that, ‘Iraqi militias have deployed an unprecedented form of torture against homosexuals by using a very strong glue that will close their anus.’ According to her, the new substance ‘is known as the American hum, which is an Iranian-manufactured glue that if applied to the skin, sticks to it and can only be removed by surgery. After they glue the anuses of homosexuals, they give them a drink that causes diarrhea. Since the anus is closed, the diarrhea causes death. Videos of this form of torture are being distributed on mobile cellphones in Iraq.’ According to this human rights activist, for the past 3 weeks a crackdown on homosexuals has been going on based on a religious decree that demands their death; dozens have been targeted. She says that the persecution of homosexuals is not confined to the Shiite clerics. Some Sunni leaders have also declared the death penalty for sodomy on satellite channels.”