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Dana

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My aunt had the picture with this caption on Facebook....

16823218502886567771227.jpg


A picture began circulating in November. It should be "The Picture of the Year,"... or perhaps, "Picture of the Decade." It won't be. In fact, unless you obtained a copy of the U.S. paper which published it, you probably would never have seen it.

The picture is that of a 21-week-old unborn baby named Samuel Alexander Armas, who is being operated on by surgeon named Joseph Bruner. The baby was diagnosed with spina bifida and would not survive if removed from his mother's womb. Little Samuel's mother, Julie Armas, is an obstetrics nurse in Atlanta.
She knew of Dr. Bruner's remarkable surgical procedure. Practicing at
Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, he performs these special operations while the baby is still in the womb.

During the procedure, the doctor removes the uterus via C-section and makes a
small incision to operate on the baby. As Dr. Bruner completed the surgery on Samuel, the little guy reached his tiny, but fully developed hand through the incision and firmly grasped the surgeon's finger. Dr. Bruner was reported as saying that when his finger was grasped, it was the most emotional moment of his life, and that for an instant during the procedure he was just frozen, totally immobile.

The photograph captures this amazing event with perfect clarity. The editors
titled the picture, "Hand of Hope." The text explaining the picture begins, "The tiny hand of 21-week-old fetus Samuel Alexander Armas emerges from the mother's uterus to grasp the finger of Dr. Joseph Bruner as if thanking the doctor for the gift of life."

Little Samuel's mother said they "wept for days" when they saw the picture. She
said, "The photo reminds us pregnancy isn't about disability or an illness, it's about a little person" Samuel was born in perfect health, the operation 100 percent successful. Now see the actual picture, and it is awesome...incredible....and hey, pass it on! The world needs to see this one!
 
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HK

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That's a touching image. I can't imagine how it must feel to have a moment of apparent interaction with a foetus.
 

Tim

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Do you want to believe the story above or do you want the real story behind this picture?
 

Tim

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That's a touching image. I can't imagine how it must feel to have a moment of apparent interaction with a foetus.

You can't have an interaction between an anesthetized baby that's fast asleep and a doctor. Right?
 

HK

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You can't have an interaction between an anesthetized baby that's fast asleep and a doctor. Right?

Well, that's why I said apparent. I'm sure it meant nothing to the baby, but it's probably still a powerful thing to watch a tiny hand grip your finger as if it knows you're there, even though logically it's just a reflex.
 

Tim

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The surgeon, Dr. Bruner, later elaborated on some of the exaggerated and false claims made about the photograph:


"It has become an urban legend," says Bruner, the Vanderbilt University surgeon who fixed the spina bifida lesion on Samuel. Many people he hears from wonder whether it's a fake.
"One person said the photo had been reviewed by a team of medical experts and they had determined that it was a hoax," Bruner says with a laugh.
More commonly, people want to know how the photo came to be.
Some opponents of abortion have claimed that the baby reached through the womb and grabbed the doctor's hand.
Not true, Bruner says.
Samuel and his mother, Julie, were under anesthesia and could not move.
"The baby did not reach out," Bruner says. "The baby was anesthetized. The baby was not aware of what was going on."
 

brieze

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Yeah.. I was thinking that. A little weird that they captured a picture precisely when the baby reached out... but maybe.
 

HK

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Some opponents of abortion have claimed that the baby reached through the womb and grabbed the doctor's hand.

When I read the OP my first thought was 'I bet someone somewhere is using this as pro-choice fodder'.

I still think it's an amazing image, even if it's not technically what it appears to be :)
 

Dana

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See this is why I posted this. I was skeptical. I don't know shit about the medical field other than what I've learned through my trials and tribulations.
 
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