Miracle child wants to become a doctor

14-year-old, Gracie Attard enthusiastically talks about her desires of travelling and studying abroad. Although her aspirations are no different from those of other girls her age, Gracie has a different story to tell.

Gracie was born as a Siamese twin and 14 years ago she unknowingly became embroiled in a controversy which was covered extensively by the international press.

Gracie’s life was saved by an operation to separate her from her sister who died so that she could live.

The operation followed a protracted court case in which her Gozitan parents Michael and Rina argued it was wrong for doctors to "play God" and decide that one sister should die.

Despite their initial opposition, the parents subsequently expressed their relief at the British court’s decision to stop them from letting nature take its course, condemning both girls to death.

Following a complex 20-hour surgery at St Mary's Hospital in Manchester, Gracie was separated from her sister Rosie who died three months later.

At the time the children were referred to as Jodie and Mary, but in June 2001, a judge lifted an order banning their identification and the first pictures of Gracie were published in the now defunct News of the World in a deal thought to be worth an estimated £350,000 (€445,000).

14 years later, a lively Gracie tells the Daily Mail of her wish to become a doctor and “help others.” In an interview with the British newspaper the teenager recounts how she had looked up the word ‘conjoined’ in a dictionary after hearing her parents utter the word in reference to her and her dead sister.

“I know what it is now although I still didn’t really understand,” she tells the newspaper.

“A year or so later, I looked on the internet and found out that our story was a big one that went round the world. I didn’t think about that. I just wanted to know exactly what happened. I read the stories and it felt as if I was reading a book about someone else. I didn’t exactly feel detached, but I wasn’t really involved either. It all happened so long ago, when I was a tiny baby,” Gracie says.
Two years later, Michael and Rina had another daughter, who they named Rosie, in memory of the dead twin.

Gracie shows a burning desire to spread her wings beyond her home in Gozo and speaks passionately of her desire to travel and study abroad. She is also determined to become a doctor, saying “I’d like to be a doctor, perhaps a children’s doctor, because I want to help people. Maybe it’s because doctors saved my life, but I think I’d want to anyway.”