Something extremely rare happened to a couple in London: A black mother and father conceived a “white” baby with blonde hair and blue eyes. Ben and Angela Ihegboro, originally from Nigeria, essentially beat incredible odds in giving birth to the girl, named Nmachi.
“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,” the BBC report stated.
The color of the skin is determined by about 12 different genes that control the pigment, or melanin, that’s produced, doctors have said.
“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 Caribbeans who have a mixed black and white ancestry,” Professor Bryan Sykes of the University of Oxford, England said in the report.
“But that doesn’t seem to be the case here. The parents are Nigerians with little known white ancestry at all.”
At the time, Angela said: “She’s a miracle baby. But still, what on Earth happened here?”
It was odd that “we had a blonde in a black family,” her husband said. He added that he knows that “it’s my kid, but I don’t know why she’s blonde.”
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