The girl with 8 limbs is having her surgery today…well, given that it will take up to 40 hours she’s having the surgery today, tomorrow and the day after.

Surgeons have begun a potentially life-changing operation to give a
normal body to a two-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs in
India.

Lakshmi Tatma, named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, went
under general anaesthetic at 7am at the Narayana Health City on the
outskirts of Bangalore in south India after more than two months of
preparation. The operation is expected to last around 40 hours.
…

Lakshmi was born with a "parasitic", headless twin –
a condition referred to technically as isciopagus – and shares some
vital organs with the twin which is fused to her at the pelvis in a
mirror image of her own body. She cannot walk or stand up.

Villagers in the impoverished rural state of
Bihar, eastern India, where she was born feted Lakshmi as a "miracle
child" and a "gift from God", but her parents decided to accept the
offer of medical intervention.

The actual condition that led to the girl with 8 limbs is a variation of the twinning process itself, similar to what happens with Siamese twins.

Surgeons in India this morning began a lengthy operation to separate a
two-year-old girl from the remains of her partially formed Siamese twin.

Lakshmi Tatma was born with four arms and four legs and extra internal organs,
joined to a “parasitic twin" who stopped developing in the
mother’s womb and was partially absorbed by her surviving sibling. The rare
condition is called isciopagus.

The girl, Lakshmi, is named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, and
some in her poor village in the northern state of Bihar revere her as a
goddess.

“Everybody considers her a goddess at our village,” said her father, Shambhu,
who goes by one name. “All this expenditure has happened to make her normal.
So far, everything is fine.”

"Parasitic" probably isn’t the correct word. Just as with other forms of conjoined twins, there are variations on what is actually being shared. Sometimes there are two heads and one body, or just about any variation of heads, bodies and limbs that you can think of. While the surgery here may be complex, at least the moral case was not: no one can possibly suggest that one girl with 8 limbs is in fact two people: something which isn’t always the case with such conjoined twins.