Hoax Alert: Indianapolis woman is not a baby factory, didn’t give birth to 17 babies within 29 hours

The use of medically assisted reproduction was cited by a new study as the cause of the doubling of twin birth rates in developed nations over 40 years. In the US, twin births rose to 16.9 twins per 1,000 deliveries in 2011 from 9.5 twins in 1975.

Like us on Facebook

Similar trends have been noticed in Britain (16.1 percent from 9.9 percent), Germany (17.2 from 9.2), France (17.4 from 9.3), Denmark (21.2 from 9.6) and South Korea (14.6 from 5), Japan Times reports on Tuesday. The research, published in the Population and Development Review journal, warns of health risks linked with multiple births.

On the first week of February, hoax makers resurfaced another fake news claiming that a woman in Indianapolis gave birth to 17 babies within 29 hours. Waffles at Noon, a Web site dedicated to debunking hoaxes, points to News Daily Report, a news site that published works of fiction disguised as satire, as the source of the article which originally came out in 2014 but resurfaced on the Web last week.

Hoax Slayer, another portal that exposes fake news, names the alleged infant factory as Catherine Bridges who, together with her husband, sought assistance from a fertility clinic in Rhode Island. It adds that the photo used, showing the 17 babies and the exhausted mother, was apparently digitally manipulated.

The Web site says the current record-holder for multiple births is Geraldine Brodrick, an Australian woman who gave birth in 1971 to nonuplets, or nine babies, but all newborns – five boys and four girls - died within six days of birth. In 1999, a Malaysian woman, Zurina Mat Saad, also had nine babies, but all – also four girls and five boys – also died within six hours.

In the US study, the co-author, Gilles Pison of Ined, a demographic research institute, stresses that twin births are more dangerous for the mother and twins who are more fragile than single babies.