The story was about a couple trying to have a baby (Picture: Getty)

A viral story about a married couple only realising they were biological twins after trying IVF has been revealed to be fake.

National news publications around the world carried the article yesterday, including Metro.co.uk.

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However, doubts have now been raised about the legitimacy of the original news outlet to publish the claims.

The story appeared on a website calling itself the Mississippi Herald, possibly designed to mirror a real local newspaper in the area called the Sun-Herald.


But the site was only registered on November 2 last year and is linked to two other ‘fake news’ sites, the Denver Inquirer and the Florida Sun Post.



The original article uses only anonymous sources and has no byline.

It claimed the husband and wife were given up for adoption at a young age and never told they were twins due to a ‘filing error’.

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A lab assistant at the IVF clinic in Jackson, Mississippi, allegedly noticed their DNA samples were remarkably similar.

After a doctor discovered they were born on the same day in 1984, they were allegedly given the heartbreaking news which they originally thought was a ‘joke’.

The article claimed that neither the couple or doctor could be named for patient confidentiality reasons.

However, the real local newspaper in the area said they had not heard of the other publication, or details of the story other than from their website.

‘There is not a Mississippi Herald,’ an editor at Mississippi Sun-Herald told Mirror Online.

‘Our web editor is aware of this story and the Mississippi Herald appears to be the only source of this news.’

‘We suspect it’s a fake news story.’

Although the website appears convincing, with numerous local stories, there are no contact details listed such as a phone number or address.

The earliest stories posted which we could find date back to April 10 and the original article links to a story about a man in Florida who allegedly fed his own genitals to an alligator, published by a site previously revealed as fake.

Websites such as this have an incentive to come up with seemingly realistic viral stories as they can garner significant amounts of money from advertising.

Metro.co.uk has contacted the owners of the Mississippi Herald via an automated contact form.