Meet 'Bionic' Girl: UK Teen Who Cannot Sense Hunger, Pain And Danger

When Olivia Farnsworth was seven years old, she was hit by a car and dragged down a street, but stood up and walked away unharmed. Even doctors were shocked to find her calm after the blow she had endured. The reason the 14-year-old survived the impact is a rare condition called chromosome 6 deletion which makes her incapable of sensing danger and feeling pain or hunger. The UK teenager is known as the 'bionic girl'.

According to the USA-based National Organisation for Rare Disorders (NORD), chromosome 6 deletion is an abnormality that occurs when there is a missing copy of the genetic material located on the short arm (p) of chromosome 6. "Features that often occur in people with chromosome 6p deletion include developmental delay, intellectual disability, behavioural problems, and distinctive facial features."

How Did Olivia Farnsworth Become A Bionic Girl?

Olivia Farnsworth barely eats or sleeps and cannot sense stimuli like danger or pain. It is believed that she is the only person in the world who possesses all three symptoms of chromosome 6 deletion together. Chief executive Dr Beverly Searle, a former research biologist, told Dailymail that Olivia was the only case they had heard of in the world.

Niki Trepak, Farnsworth's mother told Dailymail, "She got run over and dragged down the street by a car and she didn’t complain. She was dragged about ten car lengths down the road. It was horrendous. I don’t think it’s something I will ever get over. I was screaming and all my other children were screaming as she ran out."

But like in cartoons, Farnsworth got back up and looked confused as her family cried for help. Trepak said, "Olivia was just like, ‘What’s going on?’... She had a tyre mark on her chest. But her only injuries were she had no skin on her toe or her hip. The doctors think what saved her from injury was she didn’t tense up." Trepak said that from that point on, Farnsworth started showing more signs far from normal.

Dangers Of The Condition

At age nine, Farnsworth began staying up all night, Trepak told the Dailymail. She also started to realise traits from her earlier days, when Farnsworth would never cry as an infant. Further, she said, "When she was nine months old she started rejecting my milk... She’s almost become conditioned to eat, she eats at school because everyone else does but she doesn’t really need it. She never gets hungry. At home, she will go through phases of eating the same thing for months and months and then go off it."

“She also once fell badly and ripped her lip off and didn’t say anything. She had to have major plastic surgery to correct it," Trepak said. She added that Farnsworth's hair did not develop correctly until she was four years old due to the disorder. She also said that Farnsworth has violent outbursts sometimes, without understanding that others can feel pain.

Trepak said, “She’s head-butted me, punched and kicked me and can have outbursts of swearing which can be embarrassing if we’re out in public. It happened in a park the other week and people were wondering what was going on. They don’t know what’s wrong. This is why I want to raise awareness of chromosome 6 problems. To look at Olivia you don’t know anything’s wrong with her.”

No Treatment For The Condition

Trepak told the Dailymail that they are receiving assistance from Unique, a support organisation for chromosome disorders, for Farnsworth's counselling. According to research biologist Dr Searle, there is no treatment for the chromosome disorder. She told Dailymail, “But what we can do is alleviate the symptoms. We try to find matches and provide information for families, which can be great for friendship and local support.”