Two American women have discovered a dark secret behind their adoption in the late 1960s. Identical twins Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein were put up for adoption at birth, and deliberately separated as part of an experiment in the effects of nature versus nurture. They were born in New York and offered up for adoption by their schizophrenic mother. At the time, the psychiatrist at the adoption agency, Viola Bernard, believed that identical twins would develop as sturdier individuals if they were raised separately -- "a completely off-the-wall theory", in Bernstein's view. She persuaded the adoption agency to send the twins to different homes without informing the adoptive parents or the children. The study, conducted by Peter Neubauer, a psychiatrist at New York University, involved separating five pairs of twins and one set of triplets. 

Bernstein and Schein have published an account of their upbringing and relationship in a new book, Identical Strangers. Psychologist Thomas Bouchard, of the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research, says that such a study is unthinkable nowadays, but that ethical standards were different in the mid-20th century. The 1960s are long, long ago by bioethical standards, it seems. ~ Houston Chronicle, Dec 6; New York, Oct 14