Double visions

The doppelganger has fascinated for centuries, and many of us have one. Now, there's interest in using lookalikes for medical diagnosis and crime-solving- and for more sinister purposes.

- PAUL LITTLE

It sounds like the plot of a particularly gripping thriller but, according to German police, it really happened. In August last year, a Bavarian woman identified as Sharaban K attempted to fake her own death by killing a doppelganger she contacted through Instagram.

Her victim was a beauty blogger lured into a meeting by the promise of free cosmetics. The disfigured body of Khadidja O, stabbed 50 times, was initially identified as Sharaban K by members of her own family.

A few months later, on a London-bound train, a passenger saw the doppelganger of a friend he hadn’t seen in some years, “although this person was a lot rougher round the edges and about 20kg heavier”, the passenger told reddit.com. They were intrigued enough to sneak a photo of the person and send it to the old friend, noting the close resemblance, “if you’d packed on a few pounds”. The terse reply was not long in coming: “That was me.”

Doppelgangers have been part of folklore since at least ancient Egyptian times. But now, science is demonstrating that they could serve more serious purposes.

Coincidentally last August, the medical journal Cell Reports described research undertaken by a team led by Dr Manel Esteller, of Barcelona’s Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute. It’s a densely written report that makes the average reader yearn for a sentence beginning “To put it simply …” or “In other words …”, but its purport is that close look alikes who are not related are likely to share a considerable amount of DNA. Which, Esteller acknowledges, “would seem like common sense, but never had been shown”.