Posted by pinksharkmark (64.32.126.89) on December 27, 2001 at 10:17:50:
In Reply to: Hand Of Hope posted by TerryS on December 27, 2001 at 08:52:31:
Another Urban Legend, I'm afraid.
This picture is posed. The baby never reached his hand out of the incision and grasped the finger of the surgeon. A fetus at 21 weeks lacks the capacity to do that.
When this famous picture first made the rounds a few years back there were followups to it a few weeks later explaining just that. The surgeon explained that he had deliberately pulled the arm through the incision (gently, of course) in order to provide himself with a better field of view during a particularly delicate phase of the operation. And the fetus is not actually clasping anything, as you can see by taking a second look... the fingers are just naturally curled, as fingers always are when at rest.
Being a typical man-of-science surgeon type, he was actually quite miffed that the media had misrepresented what was going on.
pinky