D-AMD Channel

Discovery Health. Or the Anomalies, Maladies and Deformities Channel, if you're nasty.

There's a truly awful (read: fascinating) series that airs on the Discovery Health Channel called "Medical Incredible." It showcases just about every rare genetic disorder known to man. How bad is it? Well, Sunday night's installment featured a "skinless" baby. I just started watching this particular episode and this kid's problem is just ONE of a multitude of maladies the show plans to present us with. We've got:

1) Skinless Baby
2) Elast-i-Skin
3) Mouth-Covering Birthmark
4) Half-Hearted Baby

To put the squeamish at ease, Skinless Baby isn't really skin-LESS. He was merely born with 30% of the skin mysteriously "missing" from his body. And he's a TWIN. I'm sure his sister is busy teasing the rest of the skin off of him by now, the poor kid.

Next is a boy in Australia who crashed into a COW and needed emergency brain surgery. He's fine now. Fast forward.

Now, on to Elast-i-Skin. This dude is known as Gary "Stretch" Turner and can yank his neck skin up to his chin or affix his elbow to his waist using binder clips. He currently holds the world record for wearing the most clothespins clipped to his face -153 in total.

Next is Mouth-Covering tumor, easily the most disturbing of the show's abnormalities. A poor Albanian lady is afflicted with a mouth-covering birthmark that won't stop growing. It spans the lower half of her face, all the way around her neck and down to her chest. They removed some of the growth, but of course they weren't bright enough to film any "after" footage. Morons.

But this next malady is one that you'd ALMOST wish on yourself. A girl is born with half a heart and requires three emergency surgeries to rearrange her circulatory system. She survived the first two procedures, but needs to grow a little before she can receive the third. Problem is that now her body refuses to grow; she's a 3 year old trapped in a 1 year old body. The doctors need her to gain some serious weight, pronto. So what do they advise her parents to do...?

STUFF HER FULL OF JUNK FOOD.

No joke. As I type this, she's feeding on a trough of potato chips, a platter of M&Ms, a head-size burger and a bucket of soda.

THIS is life-saving medicine?? Dude, where do I sign up??!