Tara Sander Lee | “Knit Together in a Mother’s Womb” | Math3ma Symposium 2023
00:00:00.000 | I am so excited, I mean, I was just thinking, this is a gift, this is a gift, this is a
00:00:14.560 | gift that we are all here together, and to be here for the glory of God, and to be here
00:00:26.280 | to just communicate together, to share the journeys that we have been on, and to share
00:00:32.800 | how God is walking with us every step of the way.
00:00:36.000 | And so I'm going to, I have a lot to share with you about the journey that I have been
00:00:41.280 | on, and Tajine asked me to just give a little bit about where I've been, and how I got to
00:00:46.720 | where I am, and I show this, one, because I love the beach, and I reside in Wisconsin,
00:00:53.520 | and if you know Wisconsin, there aren't many beaches in Wisconsin, so I, whatever moment
00:00:58.720 | I can, I try to get to a beach, and you know, the reason I put this up in the Spike Awards
00:01:04.880 | for Philippians, being confident in this, that he who began a good work in you will
00:01:10.240 | carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
00:01:15.040 | I grew up in a Christian home, with Christian parents, Godly parents, my mother reminded
00:01:22.320 | me of this first, when I was going through a difficult time, I loved the church growing
00:01:26.560 | up, but I walked away from the church during my undergraduate and college years, which
00:01:31.280 | I think many people do, but it was honestly the worst thing I could have done at that
00:01:35.600 | time, but when I was done, and I realized my mistake, my mother reminded me of this
00:01:42.160 | first, and said, "God has got you, he's got a hold on you, and he's going to complete
00:01:48.080 | his work," and so this is just a good reminder for all of us, just what Mark had told us,
00:01:54.000 | that whatever you're facing, God's got this, and if you don't believe this, you're going
00:01:57.520 | to burn.
00:01:58.480 | And as I mentioned, I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, in a Christian home, Christian
00:02:04.080 | parents, went to a parochial school, and I just loved the church from a very early age,
00:02:09.200 | I loved scripture, I even thought at the time I wanted to be a pastor, but it just, that
00:02:17.040 | family was a God-planned, especially where we are now, but I loved the church, and I
00:02:23.760 | loved Genesis, learning about how God created every single one of us, and how we were made
00:02:29.520 | in his image, in his likeness, and then he reminded Noah of that, when he set forth his
00:02:37.680 | new covenant, written, "If God has God made man," and I just always was fascinated with
00:02:45.200 | how God created us as humans in his likeness, it is profound, it is profound how then Jesus
00:02:50.800 | came in human form, in the form of a baby, and it's just, it's remarkable when you think
00:02:57.520 | about it, and I also loved science as a child, and I, you know, I loved nature, and I loved
00:03:03.520 | studying God's creation, but I was like this little girl, I was trying so hard to look
00:03:08.800 | through that microscope and see God's creation even in more detail, you know, because it's
00:03:14.000 | beautiful as it is, but I wanted to understand it, and of course, the things that came with
00:03:18.480 | the microscope kit that I had when I was eight years old, which is, you know, you can barely
00:03:24.000 | see anything with it, you know, like the wings of the bee, and the, you know, the feathers
00:03:31.760 | that they provided in the kit, and I was like, ah, this is just too boring, I want to know
00:03:35.200 | what's going on inside us, how God created us as human beings, so much to my parents'
00:03:39.840 | chagrin, I actually would poke my finger, and take the blood and put it onto the microscope,
00:03:45.760 | little did I know that this was just not a high enough power microscope to be able to
00:03:50.560 | see anything, but it just, it's a good reminder to me of just how I've always been, God has
00:03:55.840 | placed it on my heart, just this interest and desire to just really dive deep into how
00:04:00.800 | he has created us to be fearfully and wonderfully made, and so I knew I would be involved into
00:04:06.880 | the sciences, and so I, you know, so I proceeded to go, oh, oh yeah, can you hear me okay?
00:04:17.600 | Yes, oh, that's so much better, could you hear anything that I said before this?
00:04:22.560 | Okay, good, so I proceeded to go and get my education, I received a PhD in bio, I received
00:04:32.800 | an undergraduate degree in biochemistry, and then PhD in biochemistry, and then I decided
00:04:38.440 | to do a postdoc in molecular and cell biology at Harvard Medical School, and it was an amazing
00:04:44.480 | experience, I learned so much, and then I came back to Wisconsin, where I joined the
00:04:49.860 | faculty at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital, and the goal was
00:04:55.360 | really to understand at the most molecular and cell level how we were created, and I
00:05:02.840 | was really fascinated with heart development, and so my lab was focused for about, you know,
00:05:08.960 | 20 years, my career, over 20 years, my career has really been focused on understanding disease,
00:05:14.300 | so I kind of toggled back and forth between how do you detect disease, so in the field
00:05:18.720 | of pathology, and then how do you try to fix it in surgery, so I kind of toggled back and
00:05:22.720 | forth between pediatric surgery and pathology in my training, and I was so fascinated with
00:05:29.120 | how God had designed the heart, and how it was one of the first organs to develop so
00:05:34.960 | early on, just 18 days after fertilization, the heart just started to form, and it was
00:05:41.280 | that very precise and intricate need for DNA being expressed at the right time, at the
00:05:49.120 | exact place, so that those cells could do exactly what they were supposed to do at the
00:05:53.780 | right time, and if that didn't happen, then some kids would develop congenital heart disease,
00:05:59.640 | so that was really what we were focused on, and not only trying to understand the disease,
00:06:05.240 | but then I directed a lab to try to understand, well, how can we even detect the, at the molecular
00:06:10.920 | level, at the DNA level, how can we detect the cause of the disease, so then these parents
00:06:15.960 | knew what was going on, and then the surgeons knew how to fix it.
00:06:26.640 | But then what happened while I was, you know, so engrossed in my studies, God blessed me
00:06:33.200 | with an amazing husband, and we tried to have children of our own, and suddenly I was faced
00:06:39.240 | with having a problem physically, we were suffering with infertility, and not knowing
00:06:45.920 | how to fix it, and we were told at this one appointment that we had a less than 2% chance
00:06:51.960 | of getting pregnant, we were just beside ourselves, we were distraught, and we headed down this
00:07:00.320 | road, this journey, that I know, that was full of fear, like, oh my gosh, how, you know,
00:07:07.080 | this was our plan, to have all these children, and now it's not happening, and there was
00:07:11.320 | so much pain on this journey, in a very short period, probably about five years, there was
00:07:16.680 | a journey of immense pain, because we were struggling with trying to get pregnant, and
00:07:22.080 | it wasn't happening, and we prayed, and we prayed, and we did whatever the doctor told
00:07:26.320 | us to do, and then we suffered miscarriages, and then I prayed some more, and God, I felt
00:07:34.520 | like Hannah, he answered our prayer, and we were blessed with a child, named Jonah, who's
00:07:39.760 | 10 now, just such a blessing from above, but through that experience of incredible pain
00:07:46.000 | through the losses, and joy in seeing my son, inside the womb, and then outside the womb,
00:07:54.040 | the same human being, it was just, it was incredible, but then we suffered another miscarriage
00:08:01.040 | after that, and so, it was like this roller coaster, of up and down, up and down, and
00:08:05.320 | I just was searching for answers, like, why would God allow this?
00:08:10.240 | And he just placed on my heart, Psalm 139, so thank you, I can't imagine a more beautiful
00:08:15.120 | introduction to my talk, and I'm going to just repeat these words, for you created my
00:08:23.540 | inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb, I praise you, because I am fearfully
00:08:28.520 | and wonderfully made, your works are wonderful, I know that full well, my frame was not hidden
00:08:33.760 | from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of
00:08:37.880 | the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body, all the days ordained for me, were written
00:08:42.720 | in your book, before one of them came to be, and it was like the Holy Spirit just placed
00:08:47.960 | on my heart, I am creating, these are my children, I am creating them, and I know the moment
00:08:55.600 | when they are created, and I am the mass, I am hand crafting each child, and just like
00:09:01.160 | it says, I ordained, all the days are ordained, and he decides, he decides when it's time
00:09:07.360 | for them to come home.
00:09:09.160 | And it was just such a wonderful comfort, but then at the same time, while I felt like,
00:09:14.640 | you know, God had really been holding me and walking me through, you know, my husband and
00:09:18.720 | I through these very difficult experiences, at the same time, I was also looking around
00:09:24.680 | and seeing what was happening in our institution.
00:09:28.400 | And I was seeing how so many, you know, I had just, I felt like, God had opened my eyes
00:09:35.080 | to how wonderful his creation was of every human person, and how he, everyone is so unique
00:09:40.960 | and creative for a purpose, and then I saw, almost on a daily basis, how so many around
00:09:46.800 | me in the world were not seeing that, and these little innocent ones were being destroyed,
00:09:55.760 | and they were being neglected, and they were even being used for research.
00:10:03.560 | And God convicted me.
00:10:06.640 | He said, stop using the gifts I have given you for myself, and my own selfish desires,
00:10:13.960 | and now to use them for his glory and his kingdom.
00:10:17.200 | I had to lay everything down at his feet, including the desire for more children.
00:10:23.080 | And that's a whole other story for another day.
00:10:26.640 | And so I started to speak up when I saw things happening and the institution doing things
00:10:31.400 | with much fear and trembling, I will say, and when godly friends, when I was able, these
00:10:35.320 | are some of my friends here were testifying here in Wisconsin, that was one of the first
00:10:38.800 | things we did, and then God had plans for me to testify in many different states and
00:10:44.560 | even go to Washington, D.C. and testify in front of Congress.
00:10:49.720 | But it came to a point where I was doing this and trying to do my job where God called me
00:10:54.280 | to step down from my academic position, and I said, really, God?
00:10:59.320 | You know, this was the goal, and then he reminded me, no, that was your plan.
00:11:03.040 | This is my plan.
00:11:04.240 | I want you to step down, and I took a year off.
00:11:08.320 | People thought I was crazy.
00:11:09.320 | I mean, when I told my chair that I was just, I was taking, I needed to step down, and I
00:11:15.680 | was going to, he said, well, what are you going to do?
00:11:16.680 | I'm like, well, I'm actually not sure, I'm going to let God tell me, but that year was
00:11:21.080 | a gift from God because I was able to really dive deep into scripture and really work on
00:11:26.320 | my relationship with him and spend time with my son and just really, and I knew he was
00:11:33.600 | calling me to, he was calling me to something different.
00:11:37.280 | And he reminded me of this from 2 Timothy, that whatever lie ahead, that for God did
00:11:43.640 | not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline.
00:11:50.960 | That power that is inside of us is that same power that rose Jesus from the dead.
00:11:56.600 | Jesus is alive.
00:11:58.160 | He is with us, and whenever we are facing struggles, he, his Holy Spirit is there to
00:12:04.600 | be our helper through this, and that power is perfected in weakness.
00:12:11.120 | And the weapons that we fight with are not the weapons of the world.
00:12:14.840 | On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds, and I feel like I'm
00:12:19.400 | reminded of this, and God places this on my heart.
00:12:21.940 | We demolish arguments and every pretense that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.
00:12:27.920 | God has created these little ones.
00:12:29.400 | He is the creator.
00:12:30.400 | These are his children, and that's the message that we tell.
00:12:34.680 | And so God has really opened doors.
00:12:37.600 | I thought what was, you know, when God put it on my heart that he was changing my career
00:12:43.240 | and he had new plans for me, door, he opened this door to the Charlotte Lozier Institute,
00:12:49.320 | which is a nonprofit organization that is located in Arlington, Virginia, just outside
00:12:54.440 | Washington, D.C.
00:12:55.440 | I work remotely from Wisconsin.
00:12:57.160 | It's such a blessing to be able to work remotely, and I just travel as needed.
00:13:02.000 | But we, our goal is, we are not a Christian organization, but we are Christians, and we,
00:13:09.320 | our goal is to use, to promote a deeper public understanding of the value of every human
00:13:14.260 | life from the moment of conception until natural death.
00:13:18.180 | And so we use science and statistics to help people understand, and this, and for the glory
00:13:24.080 | of God.
00:13:25.420 | And so, you know, human life begins at conception.
00:13:28.480 | This is a scientific fact.
00:13:31.600 | But we also know that this science-confirmed scripture in Jeremiah, "Before I formed you
00:13:36.520 | in the womb, I knew you."
00:13:38.800 | This I'm showing you here is just a beautiful image of the beginning steps of conception
00:13:46.720 | before the sperm and the egg fuse.
00:13:49.720 | And centuries of science, I'm going to just give a little bit of history here.
00:13:54.120 | Centuries of scientific discovery and technological advancement have provided indisputable proof
00:13:58.900 | that from the moment of conception, when the sperm fertilizes the egg, there is a creation
00:14:03.480 | of a new, totally distinct, integrated organism, a human being, a person, biologically distinct
00:14:10.220 | from any other form on this planet.
00:14:13.400 | And the dynamics of fertilization are well established.
00:14:16.820 | I'm showing you here what's called the Carnegie Stages of Human Development.
00:14:20.940 | These were first developed in, these were first established in 1942, have since been
00:14:25.500 | expanded.
00:14:26.500 | But they remain the standard used by all biologists to describe the first embryonic period of
00:14:31.640 | human life, which is going to be the first, actually, eight weeks since fertilization,
00:14:37.620 | or 10 weeks gestation.
00:14:38.620 | Because just a reminder that there's two different ages that you can, that you can explain pregnancy.
00:14:45.900 | I'm going to be going from gestation, just because that's what most women hear when they
00:14:49.420 | go to the OB.
00:14:52.220 | But just that earliest embryo there starts off as a zygote, a one cell.
00:14:58.160 | And that's going to grow to nearly 1 billion cells by the end of the 10th embryonic week,
00:15:03.380 | the stage 23.
00:15:05.620 | And will become a fully then developed adult, like us, containing 30 to 40 trillion cells.
00:15:12.260 | And what's amazing is by this 10th week, you can already see that that little one already
00:15:16.220 | has fingers and toes.
00:15:18.540 | What's amazing is that God has designed this child that, that by this stage, that baby
00:15:24.060 | already has 90% of its body structures.
00:15:26.340 | The adult is predicted to have 4,500 body structures.
00:15:29.300 | By this stage, they already have 4,000 of those body structures in place.
00:15:33.440 | It's remarkable.
00:15:34.860 | So what kind of cell has been produced at the sperm-egg fusion?
00:15:38.500 | Right there, that first one, which is actually the very first stage of the Carnegie stage.
00:15:44.460 | Is it a new human being, or is it simply a human cell?
00:15:47.100 | I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty details of fertilization.
00:15:53.020 | I'm going to encourage you, if you're interested, to look at this paper by Maureen Condick.
00:16:00.220 | She's a professor at the University of Utah, but she has dove deep into this of when human
00:16:04.980 | life begins.
00:16:05.980 | And she provides the scientific evidence, if you're interested.
00:16:08.780 | And she identifies 26 key events that start with fertilization through the first week,
00:16:13.700 | and documents every single stage.
00:16:15.420 | It's fascinating.
00:16:16.420 | But I just want to read what she has from this paper, that it is clear that the zygote,
00:16:20.540 | or one-cell human embryo, forms immediately upon sperm-egg fusion.
00:16:25.120 | The embryo does not function as a mere human cell or group of human cells.
00:16:29.180 | It functioned as an organism, a complete human being, at an immature stage of development.
00:16:34.940 | So it's basically just-- it's no different that zygote is just another name for the child,
00:16:40.020 | right?
00:16:41.020 | So you have-- we call it an infant, a toddler, a teenager.
00:16:45.700 | The zygote is just the earliest stage of the human being.
00:16:50.580 | And I also want to point out this paper by O'Reilly and Mueller, where they say prenatal
00:16:55.860 | age begins at fertilization, postnatal age at birth.
00:16:59.940 | So further confirmation.
00:17:01.340 | And then even, if you want even more evidence, scientific consensus on when a human's life
00:17:05.500 | begins.
00:17:06.500 | So this was a PhD student.
00:17:08.300 | His thesis was on, what do people-- what do other people say about this?
00:17:13.260 | So he surveyed about 5,500 biologists at over 1,000 institutions in 86 countries.
00:17:20.140 | Over 95% of them were PhDs, and over half of them are non-religious.
00:17:24.180 | And the majority of them say, yes, human life begins at conception.
00:17:29.940 | And so I just think it's remarkable that not only do we see that in scripture, do we read
00:17:35.340 | in scripture, but science confirms that.
00:17:38.060 | And we're now going to, like-- I want to walk you through this journey of what happens from
00:17:42.300 | fertilization, because it's fascinating.
00:17:45.060 | And when I was in my mother's womb, this is what my mother saw.
00:17:48.540 | I mean, you can barely pick out the ultrasound scan.
00:17:51.820 | You barely pick out the head of the baby from the 1970s.
00:17:55.300 | So I think God has graced us with the technology of ultrasound.
00:18:00.060 | And that just within the last 50 years, there have been remarkable improvements to be able
00:18:05.780 | to see what is actually happening to these babies inside the womb.
00:18:09.980 | Because now you can see modern ultrasound, these babies, you can see them with absolute
00:18:13.780 | clarity.
00:18:14.780 | Barely you could pick out the head with the black and white grainy dots.
00:18:18.340 | Now you can see the facial features.
00:18:21.300 | You can see every facet of that baby.
00:18:25.660 | And that's not even to mention the behaviors.
00:18:28.300 | A baby at this stage is going to be sucking his or her thumb and is already going to have
00:18:32.700 | a preference for whether they're right or left handed.
00:18:35.180 | It's remarkable.
00:18:36.180 | I mean, and there's studies that have shown that, that whether they use their right or
00:18:39.320 | left hand, that then follows what happens after birth.
00:18:43.940 | And so we thought it was so important that, you know, God has provided so much information
00:18:50.700 | through ultrasound and through science of what's happening, you know, his beautiful,
00:18:55.620 | it's like a window into the womb.
00:18:57.740 | And so he, you know, to show us how wonderful his creation is of these little ones.
00:19:02.860 | But we know that a lot of these papers and science are behind firewalls.
00:19:06.580 | And it's hard for people to get access to them and everybody is really busy.
00:19:10.180 | And so we really wanted to, we were fascinated by it.
00:19:12.900 | And we wanted to make, we really felt called to bring this, I know Ty Dinea has used this
00:19:18.340 | word accessible.
00:19:19.340 | And I think that's so important, because we wanted to make this accessible to people and
00:19:23.100 | to show them the beauty of God's human creation inside the womb.
00:19:27.620 | Because modern medicine tells us more than ever before about how we are wonderfully made
00:19:33.140 | by our creator.
00:19:34.300 | So I'm going to next I'm going to show you a video that we made that's on our website.
00:19:47.740 | And I'm going to put the development down to one minute.
00:20:11.580 | And it's just beautiful.
00:20:24.380 | It's beautiful how God's hands shaped and made all of us.
00:20:27.460 | I mean, we so we use that medical artwork that is accurate based on the most up to date
00:20:32.640 | information that we have to just show that and we want to share this journey with you
00:20:38.420 | this voyage that God has a sign and I want to talk about, you know, I want to talk about
00:20:45.780 | how we are creative for a purpose how and how God's awesome creative and awesome design
00:20:50.900 | is that we are each unique and I'm reminded of Ephesians 2 10 for we are his workmanship
00:20:56.580 | created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk
00:21:02.260 | in them.
00:21:03.820 | We are all created for a purpose and every human being is created with a purpose has
00:21:07.740 | intrinsic value and worth and God designed each person to be unique and magnificent from
00:21:13.140 | the moment of conception everything that defines us in our uniqueness.
00:21:18.100 | I mean, we can get into like how the environment affects things, but we know that our uniqueness
00:21:22.940 | and our genome is present right from the moment of conception and it is nothing short of a
00:21:28.300 | miracle and what's amazing is that there is enough genetic variation that again no two
00:21:33.300 | humans are going to be the same or ever will be even in the case of twins.
00:21:37.340 | So how can that be why I want to go back to we knew that DNA was important in defining
00:21:45.660 | our uniqueness as human beings.
00:21:48.420 | But what science can you know, it's science again confirms what the Holy Spirit revealed
00:21:52.220 | to King David 3000 years ago when he wrote Psalm 139 we are literally knit together in
00:21:57.100 | our mother's room because DNA is when it was the destruction was discovered in 1953.
00:22:05.780 | It was described as actually two ribbons of genetic material woven together.
00:22:10.620 | It's just like that tapestry that Mark was talking about and when Watson and Crick who
00:22:15.140 | discovered this in their in their best-selling book later Watson later claim that Rick Crick
00:22:21.980 | announced that discovery by walking into the nearby Eagle Pub and blurting out we have
00:22:28.220 | found the secret of life.
00:22:29.740 | They knew they knew that discovering the structure of DNA was key to understanding
00:22:36.300 | the remarkable uniqueness of each one of us.
00:22:39.740 | Well, why is that?
00:22:40.740 | Well, because DNA is in some respects like the blueprint of life.
00:22:44.740 | Every living thing has its own unique genetic information or DNA code based on the same
00:22:48.900 | four nucleotides A C G and T and it's all contained within each of our cells compacted
00:22:56.580 | into the nucleus of every cell and the cell is going to be like the it's like a little
00:23:04.220 | machine kind of but it basically is going to be the function of how we are going to
00:23:10.340 | function and how everything is going to develop inside our body.
00:23:14.340 | And so although only you know one generated human genome sequence is shown for the purpose
00:23:20.660 | of the application in fact reality we have two genome sequences right one from mom and
00:23:25.980 | one from dad.
00:23:27.180 | And they estimate that just one of the sequences is going to be about three billion nucleotides
00:23:33.140 | each copy.
00:23:34.140 | So we have each person has six billion nucleotides.
00:23:36.840 | It's amazing.
00:23:38.140 | And if all that so I'm not a math person but there are really amazing math people like
00:23:43.940 | you all that have determined that if the DNA in the adult human body is unraveled like
00:23:49.580 | a string that it would exceed sixty three billion miles in length which is comparable
00:23:54.860 | to three hundred and forty round trips from the earth to the sun and back.
00:23:59.900 | And when estimating the number of different types of people that can be created it has
00:24:05.620 | been determined that any male and female can produce over eight million offspring that
00:24:11.460 | are each genetically unique.
00:24:13.580 | Nobody's going to be having I don't think eight million offspring but it just shows
00:24:17.580 | that the probability of there being two identical children from any two parents in the population
00:24:23.260 | is six point two billion to one.
00:24:26.100 | So that just shows how God has just engineered this with such preciseness that we are all
00:24:32.780 | so unique from the very down to the very DNA that is in each one of us and is in ourselves.
00:24:40.900 | So the human genome is again packaged as I mentioned into each of these cells and it's
00:24:47.340 | we need to have two chromosomes again one from mom one from dad I'm showing you here
00:24:50.740 | what's called a karyotype so these are actually the chromosomes and you can see that the chromosomes
00:24:55.100 | we have twenty three chromosomes twenty two of them labeled one two twenty two and then
00:24:59.140 | our sex chromosomes x or y if you have an x y you're going to be a male if you have
00:25:03.300 | x x you're going to be a female and this is going to be determined from the moment of
00:25:06.860 | conception whether you are male or female.
00:25:10.300 | And you can see here just just all of these chromosomes contain all of the DNA that is
00:25:15.780 | in our bodies that are complete genome for life.
00:25:19.940 | And what happens is that this DNA is packaged in the cell very tightly but it's going to
00:25:26.140 | be unraveled at just the right time.
00:25:28.900 | This is where the precise nature of God really really shows that it's going to be unraveled
00:25:34.220 | at just the right time to activate these genes that are kind of like that are going to then
00:25:39.740 | give rise to proteins that are going to perform the many cellular functions and are going
00:25:45.660 | to define then who we are as human beings and and you're going to produce the more cells
00:25:51.220 | and more tissues and organs and be the human being that we are.
00:25:55.220 | But it's just it's it's fascinating that there that this dogma of DNA going from DNA to RNA
00:26:02.500 | and then to protein is what defines so much of how we are so unique.
00:26:07.980 | And what's amazing is that you think OK well the genome is estimated to contain about twenty
00:26:12.180 | to twenty five thousand genes you say OK well that's that's actually that's kind of a lot
00:26:16.220 | of genes but but then you think OK but what's amazing and what I'm showing you here is that
00:26:21.300 | the DNA is on the top so you can see the DNA is there's what's called exons and then those
00:26:26.340 | exons are kind of like the so if you look at it like a recipe OK so that those are going
00:26:32.700 | to be the you have a cookbook is the DNA and then the recipes are going to tell you like
00:26:36.780 | how to bake a cake right.
00:26:38.520 | Well this is like a recipe for how to make proteins that are going to be again they're
00:26:41.780 | going to tell the cells what to do.
00:26:43.860 | But those those coding regions like the recipe part can be shuffled around and you can with
00:26:50.220 | one gene in some cases you can make up to 100 different proteins just from one gene.
00:26:56.480 | And so it's just this starts to show just how we dive deeper and deeper into more variability.
00:27:01.860 | And this is just also showing a structure of protein and how again it's kind of like
00:27:06.180 | a ribbons like together and just beautiful intricacy.
00:27:10.900 | And so what's in what's interesting is that people are so fascinated with understanding
00:27:14.860 | well what is the sequence of the genome for every single human being.
00:27:19.460 | Because in order to do that we can understand what kind of what does make us more unique
00:27:23.100 | and how are we different from each other.
00:27:25.400 | And so that's been a big push from the Human Genome Project is to actually determine the
00:27:30.100 | sequence of all six billion nucleotides and what's the order of that.
00:27:36.540 | And now then in 2022 there was actually gaps in that though with the first draft in 2001.
00:27:44.220 | But then in 2022 they tried to fill in some of those gaps.
00:27:47.380 | And now the new human pan genome is going to try to look at more different races to
00:27:52.300 | really get a good feel for what type of what is the sequence.
00:27:57.060 | Because the more you understand about the sequence the more you can hopefully understand
00:28:00.820 | about a how are we uniquely made but also how can we maybe identify disease.
00:28:06.800 | And so but what they're finding so far with the information that we have is that human
00:28:10.740 | beings are about ninety nine point six percent identical or point four percent different
00:28:16.360 | from another person.
00:28:17.820 | So just that point four percent difference.
00:28:20.420 | I mean that's that's why we look different.
00:28:22.620 | That's why we act different.
00:28:23.820 | That's why we you know we just it's just different hair color different eye color different diseases.
00:28:30.140 | It's just different functions.
00:28:31.300 | It's just it's remarkable but it all in many respects comes down to point four percent
00:28:35.780 | difference when it comes down to the genome.
00:28:37.660 | I'm just going to very briefly give you a molecular 101 science lesson about what are
00:28:43.580 | some of those differences.
00:28:45.260 | But you're going to hear something called like single nucleotide variants.
00:28:48.540 | So throughout the genome there are sprinkled some variants.
00:28:52.260 | And so what's showing you here is that they can just at one spot in the genome.
00:28:57.140 | Let's say person one will have a C on one strand and a T on the other.
00:29:01.500 | But person two will have a C on one strand and a C on the other and person three will
00:29:05.380 | have a T and a T. So you can see how there's this genetic variability that is based in
00:29:10.660 | just at the very subtle and most of these are non-disease for me but they can have dramatic
00:29:16.060 | effects of who we are as a person and even like how we respond to different medications
00:29:20.860 | and such.
00:29:23.100 | There's large structural variations in which you can you actually can see that when you
00:29:27.940 | look at the chromosomes that parts of the chromosome will actually be deleted or they
00:29:33.380 | will be duplicated or they will invert from with each other.
00:29:38.180 | You will have insertions or even translocations where one part of the chromosome from like
00:29:42.460 | chromosome four will go on to chromosome 20 and then vice versa.
00:29:46.500 | And so it's just it's really fascinating.
00:29:49.780 | I also want to show you that you can have smaller like what's called duplication.
00:29:53.900 | So in this case people have been looking really hard at this gene called Notch 2NL.
00:30:00.260 | It's like alphabet soup when you look at all these genes and what they name them.
00:30:03.540 | But this one they're particularly interested in because it is unique to humans.
00:30:07.980 | And this one has been specifically been shown to play in a critical role in brain development
00:30:13.460 | and they're finding that in people that have more copies of this gene they have bigger
00:30:17.520 | brains and if they have less copies of this gene they have smaller brains.
00:30:22.140 | And this can actually be some causation for some of the disorders we see with brain microcephaly
00:30:27.940 | or macrocephaly.
00:30:29.220 | So it's really quite fascinating.
00:30:31.860 | So now we're going to kind of back up and I just I want to just pause and say all of
00:30:36.820 | this I mean that was just a snapshot of the genetic diversity that we have.
00:30:42.480 | But all of that is present at the moment of fertilization.
00:30:46.380 | Within 40 hours of fertilization then I'm showing you here so right this is a picture
00:30:51.060 | again of within the first week of fertilization that the cells are going to instantly start
00:30:58.020 | to divide.
00:30:59.020 | All the genetic information is in place.
00:31:00.780 | We are already unique.
00:31:02.020 | We are human living human being from the moment of conception.
00:31:04.780 | But now we're going to start to divide our cells and grow all the tissues and organs.
00:31:10.660 | And so the division starts immediately.
00:31:12.660 | So you go from two cells to four cells and this happens rapidly the doubling the number
00:31:17.640 | of total cells.
00:31:18.640 | And I think I want to go back to Psalm 139 where we are made in the secret place.
00:31:23.420 | Only God knows at exactly the moment when that conception takes place.
00:31:28.460 | If it happens inside the womb only God is the only one that knows.
00:31:32.740 | And so these are images of real embryos showing what it looks what the zygote that single
00:31:38.620 | cell looks like on day one.
00:31:40.820 | And that again that single cell zygote is going to become a 30 trillion cell adult.
00:31:45.100 | On day two again that division occurs.
00:31:47.360 | The cells just keep dividing over and over.
00:31:50.700 | On day five the human being is called a blastocyst.
00:31:54.500 | It's just another stage of development.
00:31:58.340 | And at that stage that's when it's ready to implant into the mother's womb.
00:32:03.220 | And I think what's fascinating for those of you that might be interested in in vitro fertilization
00:32:07.860 | and what happens at day five at this stage this happens outside of the womb for in vitro
00:32:14.420 | fertilization and it's at this stage then it will the embryo will be transferred back
00:32:19.220 | into the mother to see and hopefully implantation will occur.
00:32:23.460 | If there's any doubt that these human beings at day five are not a real human living human
00:32:29.260 | being I encourage you to look at this page.
00:32:32.900 | It's called nightlight.org.
00:32:33.900 | They are involved in embryo adoption or if you've heard of snowflake babies.
00:32:39.500 | And these are babies that were all the result of embryo adoption after in vitro fertilization.
00:32:45.540 | And these embryos were adopted out and they have names.
00:32:49.220 | They have faces now.
00:32:50.700 | But before that when they were adopted they just had numbers.
00:32:54.180 | So this was embryo number 41.
00:32:57.700 | Now she's Ella.
00:32:58.700 | And it's just it's a remarkable reminding that we are human beings from the moment of
00:33:02.000 | conception and even at that five day stage just how remarkable seeing the human beings.
00:33:10.780 | And so at that stage then at the five day stage then that's when implantation is going
00:33:16.100 | to occur.
00:33:17.100 | And so I'm showing you here medical artwork showing that blastocyst in the mother's uterus
00:33:22.460 | and then it's six days after fertilization the early embryo will begin to implant in
00:33:26.820 | the uterus and the outer cells in the blastocyst have what's called a special sticky molecules
00:33:31.660 | that will help the blastocyst bind to the wall of the uterus.
00:33:35.100 | And what's fascinating is that the embryo is now in this permanent home in his mother
00:33:38.420 | and will stay there until it's ready for birth.
00:33:42.420 | So then week five now this is now that implantation has occurred now we have nutrition that's
00:33:48.380 | coming from the mother.
00:33:49.740 | The inner cells of the embryo are going to now form three layers of tissue.
00:33:53.620 | So now we start to see the body plan forming.
00:33:56.180 | So the top layer is going to be the skin the nervous system and the eyes and the ears the
00:34:01.540 | middle layer is going to contribute to the muscles the bones the kidneys and the reproductive
00:34:06.940 | system and the inner layer contributes to the baby's lungs and intestine just to name
00:34:11.080 | a few.
00:34:12.180 | So it's just it's amazing that just so soon after the embryo is developed that we already
00:34:18.060 | see the body plan start to occur.
00:34:21.300 | And just six weeks after the baby the baby is developing we're going to have the first
00:34:29.020 | heartbeat whoops let me go back.
00:34:31.500 | And so this is I have to wait for it I have to be patient.
00:34:43.060 | There we go.
00:34:44.060 | So here you are seeing by photoscopy a real beating heart of a baby in the six week gestation
00:34:50.220 | which is again four weeks post fertilization so the baby itself is really only four weeks
00:34:55.060 | of age.
00:34:56.100 | But it's just fascinating.
00:34:58.900 | It's you can see the blood is pumping in the heart at just this early stage.
00:35:03.780 | And this again is the first organ to form and function in the heart.
00:35:06.220 | It's a vital source of circulation and nutrients and oxygen carrying blood and especially once
00:35:11.700 | the nutritional requirements the embryo can no longer be met by diffusion of the placenta
00:35:16.020 | alone that's why we need the heart to form.
00:35:19.980 | So these are just some interesting facts about heart development.
00:35:23.340 | You're going to see at the on the far left that's the heart tube.
00:35:27.100 | That's where the early primitive heart is going to start to beat.
00:35:31.140 | It beats just 22 days after fertilization that again is in the sixth week and not only
00:35:35.780 | is it beating it's beating rhythmically at 110 beats per minute by the end of that week.
00:35:42.600 | Just a couple weeks later it's going to be at 159 beats per minute.
00:35:46.020 | By the ninth week it's going to be twice the heart rate of the mother's at 170 beats per
00:35:49.580 | minute.
00:35:51.400 | By the end of the sixth week it will have already beat 1 million times and it just keeps
00:35:55.620 | going on and on from there.
00:35:57.040 | The same heart will beat 54 million times before birth and over 3.2 million times into
00:36:02.180 | adulthood and what's important is that the heart rate is so important at this stage for
00:36:05.980 | any of you who have been pregnant or have seen an ultrasound you know that the heartbeat
00:36:11.820 | is the sign of life and when they they look for the physician looks for the heartbeat
00:36:16.820 | and they because they know that if they see a heartbeat that that baby has a high chance
00:36:20.620 | of surviving to childbirth as high as 98% in some cases.
00:36:25.940 | And so I started heart valve development when I was in Boston and so I find it just fascinating
00:36:31.540 | that these heart valves, you're seeing here a picture on the right of an adult heart valve,
00:36:36.940 | these leaflets are like they are so thin they're like these little like paper thin even thinner
00:36:43.140 | than paper they're so delicate and they open and close to ensure that the blood is pumping
00:36:48.660 | in the right direction and even at this early stage at six weeks there are already these
00:36:55.060 | primitive heart valves that are in place that prevent the backflow of the blood through
00:36:59.780 | the heart tube and assist in the forward propulsion of the blood through this baby to make sure
00:37:04.380 | that the blood is pumping and the nutrients are getting to the baby so that the rest of
00:37:07.500 | the organs can now start to develop.
00:37:09.820 | And one of the next organs that is very important and is going to develop is the brain and so
00:37:14.700 | we see here the different stages of brain development throughout human development and
00:37:22.460 | what's amazing is that the brain is going to undergo complex and lifelong changes and
00:37:27.180 | so some of the most important stages of brain maturation occur during development, early
00:37:31.660 | childhood and adolescence and actually it's not until about age 25 when our brain is fully
00:37:37.540 | developed and fully functional.
00:37:39.540 | So it kind of explains some things you know maybe so but it's just it's an important fact
00:37:44.740 | and I want to you know a lot of times with the heart too people will say well that's
00:37:48.940 | not a real heart at six weeks because it's not four chambers yet but I remind you that
00:37:55.380 | life is a continuum right we are always in some form of development we are either developing
00:38:05.220 | function or honestly losing function so it's it's just it's fascinating that that God has
00:38:11.900 | engineered it that we are continually continually developing and our systems are maturing it's
00:38:18.660 | incredible.
00:38:19.660 | And so I'm going to start kind of see how we're doing on time okay so I'm going to start
00:38:23.620 | moving through and showing you some this is a real image this is a real picture of baby
00:38:29.120 | inside the womb these were images that were very generously provided by the Center for
00:38:33.740 | Bioethical Reform Greg Cunningham's group and it's just remarkable to see the little
00:38:39.740 | one here as early as week nine brain as we showed earlier brain activity is is really
00:38:48.100 | is really exploding at this point so we can see that the embryo starts to move and respond
00:38:52.580 | to touch the embryo's heart as we said now at this stage the heart started beating at
00:38:56.620 | six weeks but now by nine weeks now all four chambers are in place and we see that there's
00:39:01.900 | already pockets of cells that resemble taste buds on the on the tongue the eyelids are
00:39:07.980 | already formed the knees and elbows appear the toes start to form and the tissue between
00:39:13.020 | the fingers become thin and so you can notice how the knees and elbows are forming and the
00:39:17.820 | neurons and I think it's it's just it's remarkable we know that brain activity has actually has
00:39:24.980 | already been recorded at this stage it's just it's remarkable and there's even ultrasound
00:39:30.220 | recordings has also shown that the embryo can actually hiccup at this stage so now by
00:39:36.340 | 10 weeks and if you remember back to those Carnegie stages that I showed you this is
00:39:40.460 | the stage where we see that they have 90% now of their structures the fingers and the
00:39:45.140 | toes and the digestive system are fully in place the toes can actually wiggle this is
00:39:50.420 | where the embryo can show preference for the right or left hand they've already they can
00:39:54.660 | detect electrical activity of the heart that resembles that of a newborn the embryo can
00:40:00.340 | actually bring can bend his elbows and bring his hands together and can also roll over
00:40:05.540 | with the amniotic sac squint grasp and point his toes and when the embryo touches his face
00:40:12.420 | he will frequently move his head away and so the the embryo can even make intermittent
00:40:17.820 | breathing motions which is just remarkable by week 11 we can see that this at this point
00:40:25.420 | the embryonic period is done and the the baby is called a fetus we can see external genitalia
00:40:31.940 | start developing tooth buds are developing more complex behaviors are seen such as thumb
00:40:37.700 | sucking swallowing and stretching and now there's an explosive growth of the brain growing
00:40:43.700 | over 250 neurons per minute and once the preborn baby starts moving he doesn't sit still so
00:40:51.600 | reachers researchers have actually quantified fetal movements and they found that the fetus
00:40:55.780 | does not stay still for more than 13 minutes at a time and by 11 weeks the nerve receptors
00:41:01.620 | inside the fetal skin can sense light touch so if anything lightly tickles the sole of
00:41:06.540 | the fetus's foot the fetus will bend his knee to withdraw his foot and may even curl his
00:41:11.540 | toes so by week 12 we see a dramatic growth spurt you can tell I don't know if you've
00:41:16.840 | been monitoring you know watching the centimeters on the bottom but I think it was only a couple
00:41:20.940 | a few centimeters and now we're up to you know six centimeters from crown to rump and
00:41:27.260 | and fingerprints and fingernails are developing I mean the fingernails will start to grow
00:41:32.320 | and the fingerprints have already started to form and it's remarkable just how even
00:41:36.680 | subtle you know the fingerprints are going to start to form and it's going to be even
00:41:41.060 | just that environment within the womb that is going to play a direct role into what type
00:41:45.380 | of fingerprints that child develops and again that by 12 weeks the fetus will respond to
00:41:50.040 | light touch now on the face the palms of the hands it's just remarkable we've actually
00:41:55.120 | put together 12 amazing facts at 12 weeks I'll just talk about a couple of these but
00:42:01.260 | you can go to our website and see them but all major organs have formed by now the four
00:42:05.980 | chambered heart is pumping over six quarts of blood per day each finger can move separately
00:42:12.540 | the fetus has a face the teeth are developing and the brain connections that are formed
00:42:18.360 | at 12 weeks will survive into adulthood so it's just it's remarkable by 15 weeks this
00:42:25.740 | is the the big stage when we start to see pain and stress response so it honestly if
00:42:33.740 | you go back this is fascinating literature there was a time when they thought that that
00:42:38.700 | newborns didn't feel pain I mean which is just and then there was then the literature
00:42:44.900 | started saying well no they they don't feel pain until after 24 weeks and and Dr. Stuart
00:42:51.100 | Dubochard was one of the world's leading neuroscientists he actually published a major study saying
00:42:55.380 | that he's like no pain doesn't start until after 24 weeks but then now with all the evidence
00:43:01.540 | you know when are the receptors actually forming on these children when and now with ultrasound
00:43:05.660 | we can actually see them respond to pain the weight of the new scientific scientific evidence
00:43:11.980 | is so strong that he changed his view and he published a recent report that says no
00:43:16.780 | you know what unborn babies I was wrong they can experience pain by 15 weeks and possibly
00:43:22.200 | as early as 12 weeks and what they thought was that the cerebral cortex was not needed
00:43:27.660 | to feel pain and that's not the case evidence is showing that it actually a functioning
00:43:32.180 | cerebral cortex is not required to feel pain and so what's even more and I'll talk about
00:43:37.700 | this a little bit later in my talk but actually they do fetal surgery now and they use anesthesia
00:43:41.860 | specifically for the baby because they know that the baby can feel pain and this is just
00:43:46.780 | an image of a baby that's sitting comfortably inside the womb about ready to have fetal
00:43:52.900 | surgery to correct a defect so you can see sitting comfortably and then you're gonna
00:43:57.220 | see the response once they received an injection in their thigh of anesthesia and so you it's
00:44:05.620 | just remarkable just you know not only do we know it scientifically at the receptor
00:44:11.340 | level we can see it in their face they are feeling pain and this is for anesthesia this
00:44:17.060 | is to give them the anesthesia so that they won't feel the pain so you can see just the
00:44:21.300 | cutting 40 ultrasound images and how much more information we have now about these little
00:44:26.180 | ones by about this stage you know about you know 16 weeks we start to see all the sensory
00:44:31.660 | systems and sensations are in place touch taste hearing vision smell and pain I'm not
00:44:37.100 | going to go into all these details I encourage you to go to a website to get more but it's
00:44:40.620 | just when you see how God and just the preciseness like all of this is happening just at the
00:44:46.300 | right time in the right place by weeks 19 and 20 we can see that the baby is starting
00:44:52.800 | to actually practice activities that he will do outside the womb such as breathing and
00:44:56.820 | crying and the rooting reflex vocal cords are developing in a pattern that they will
00:45:01.620 | see in crying after birth it's just it's remarkable weeks 21 to 22 again you know the inner ear
00:45:09.380 | has developed they can start to hear they can start to hear their mother's voice just
00:45:14.620 | a couple weeks later it's just respond to taste there's actually studies that have shown
00:45:20.060 | that if the mother eats a cookie versus something bitter the baby will drink more of the amniotic
00:45:25.500 | fluid because they already can strongly taste and they know what they like my son to this
00:45:31.820 | day now I know why he I felt kicking every time I ate a banana because this day he hates
00:45:35.980 | but to this day he hates bananas oh I thought bananas were good for you now I know he actually
00:45:43.540 | was very unhappy every time I ate one and so that you know I'm again I'm really there's
00:45:50.140 | a lot going on six seventh eight nine months we see again response to sound in light there's
00:45:55.540 | an amazing photography of where you can see the the baby actually putting a hand kind
00:46:02.580 | of towards the the mother's uterus at the end of uterus in response to light sleep patterns
00:46:09.680 | brain growth and lung maturation and of course then labor and delivery and new beginnings
00:46:13.460 | will happen about nine months but I want to just back up because we do have a little bit
00:46:18.940 | of time I want to talk about just the technology that God has graced us with in saving these
00:46:25.340 | tiny babies because we know that you know in many cases women carry babies for nine
00:46:30.620 | months and then deliver but we know that life doesn't always happen as we planned it and
00:46:36.460 | I think through this incredible gift of technology God has reminded us the humanity of these
00:46:42.500 | little ones inside the womb as and and just I'm going to walk you through some of the
00:46:47.940 | amazing things that are happening to remind us of just how how beautiful these babies
00:46:53.220 | are so there have been so much technology happening within the last three decades to
00:46:59.460 | not only to save extremely premature babies so for various reasons some babies might be
00:47:05.940 | might women might go into labor early and so medical advances have now made it possible
00:47:11.660 | to save these extremely premature early babies at early and earlier stages so once you know
00:47:17.500 | about 50 years ago viability was about maybe 24 weeks you could see that they were born
00:47:22.500 | these babies could survive now that clock just it's an arbitrary point of like now because
00:47:28.980 | of when viability is because now we're seeing because of modern science that some of these
00:47:32.820 | babies as early as 21 weeks gestation that's just about a little over halfway through gestation
00:47:38.780 | are surviving so this this little boy is Curtis Means he was born in July 2020 he was born
00:47:47.180 | at 21 weeks in one day 132 days premature and he is on record as he broke the Guinness
00:47:53.700 | World Record and so it's just remarkable just how what can be done to save these and because
00:47:58.780 | of that hospitals many American hospitals now have started offering the resuscitation
00:48:03.620 | and the active care for infants born at 22 weeks I now want to just talk about whoops
00:48:12.100 | not only can you save babies outside the womb but as I mentioned earlier with fetal surgery
00:48:15.860 | just the technology to save babies now inside the womb so what you we wrote a paper on this
00:48:22.300 | if you're interested but what you're seeing here and it's just it's his name is Samuel
00:48:27.260 | Armis on the left that's a famous picture it's called the hand of hope one of the earlier
00:48:33.980 | earlier reports of which they actually did surgery to repair a defect inside the woman
00:48:39.380 | you can see his little hand there they literally bring the uterus out and you can see the baby's
00:48:44.140 | hand because he crafts he he he grasped the surgeon's hand in process and they they had
00:48:49.540 | a photographer there to take the picture it was remarkable and here's a picture another
00:48:54.660 | fetal surgery in which you can see the little foot right there and Children's Hospital of
00:48:59.620 | Philadelphia reminds us because they do many of these surgeries that the average size of
00:49:04.140 | the organs operated on during fetal surgery is is about a half an inch so it's just remarkable
00:49:09.400 | how they do these and to see the amount of growth in in in surgery in 1997 so it's chopped
00:49:16.500 | us so many of these surgeries but in 1997 that was it was new and so they have a fetal
00:49:21.380 | family union to get together and celebrate that these babies survived the surgery inside
00:49:26.220 | the womb and I want to point out too that this surgery can happen as early as 15 weeks
00:49:32.820 | so it's just remarkable but you can see how much it's grown I mean they had just like
00:49:36.780 | a handful and they were in the lobby but now in 2022 just last year they now had to go
00:49:41.500 | to the zoo to celebrate the thousands of babies that have been that have been saved it's remarkable
00:49:48.300 | and one of the main surgeries that are done you can hear about this in the news all the
00:49:52.000 | time is in utero treatment for spina bifida and so this is when that very early stage
00:49:56.920 | when the neural tube is forming that will give rise to the brain and the and the spinal
00:50:01.420 | cord it doesn't close properly the way it should and so it actually it's actually exposed
00:50:07.780 | to the to the to the amniotic fluid and they need to close that and because it can lead
00:50:14.180 | to significant health issues for the child and can even be fatal so what they found is
00:50:19.820 | that you can actually go in and you can repair this wound and it leads to significant improvements
00:50:24.540 | for these children not only do they survive but they actually have a much better quality
00:50:28.020 | of life and they can walk and actually this study was so powerful because it actually
00:50:32.700 | showed that that they actually stopped the study early because they said well wait this
00:50:37.940 | is this is amazing how let's just stop the study and offer this to all babies they also
00:50:44.260 | do laser therapy for twin to twin transfusion syndrome so this is where it's a serious and
00:50:50.000 | life-threatening condition for both babies caused by an abnormal connections and blood
00:50:54.060 | flow between identical twins twins who share one placenta and and so it's fascinating they
00:50:59.620 | can go in and this they don't even have to open up mom it's just using really tiny fetal
00:51:04.340 | scopes to go in it's very non-invasive and they can then correct the disorder with laser
00:51:09.400 | ablation it's it's remarkable we're also seeing congenital heart disease actually going in
00:51:15.100 | and repairing the baby's heart is now really on the horizon and Children's Hospital actually
00:51:20.100 | performed one of the first surgeries and you can see this little boy here who is obviously
00:51:25.300 | one of the first and he's doing very well in playing baseball we see here Cleveland
00:51:30.300 | Clinic where they actually performed a rare and complex life-saving surgery to remove
00:51:36.220 | a tumor that was attached to the heart of a 26 week old baby and it takes just an incredible
00:51:42.700 | team of physicians and you can see again here they got the picture of him while they were
00:51:47.900 | doing the surgery the little hand and and then there he is now born on July 13th of
00:51:55.020 | 2021 and doing well the most recent one this spring was at Boston Children's actually did
00:52:03.180 | they repaired a rare fatal blood disorder that occurred in the brain of a child so this
00:52:09.780 | was just remarkable that they're actually able to go in and do brain surgery in the
00:52:13.740 | child in the utero and I think this is just a remarkable story that not only that but
00:52:19.820 | we actually have what are called adult stem cells that's a whole nother talk but these
00:52:24.380 | these that are literally life-saving and so what they found that they can actually use
00:52:28.220 | a mother's own cells and in some cases the father's cells to actually help to correct
00:52:33.900 | blood disorders in these babies so what they do is they collect the stem cells from the
00:52:37.980 | mom this pregnant and then they basically give them back to the baby in utero it's like
00:52:44.620 | a stem it's like a blood transplant but inside the womb and this is saving babies with blood
00:52:50.220 | disorders such as alpha thalassemia it's remarkable and this just reminds me of just that connection
00:52:56.300 | with the mom and the baby because this paper talks about forever connected the lifelong
00:53:01.740 | biological consequences of fetal maternal and maternal fetal my chimerism a lot of words
00:53:07.900 | but basically mom and baby exchange cells in DNA very early on as early as six weeks
00:53:15.020 | and that lasts for a lifetime so those part of that baby is with the mom not even if that
00:53:22.700 | child isn't alive anymore they're forever connected it's remarkable and I just want
00:53:28.140 | to and they're showing that this this is a quote from the paper this intricate exchange
00:53:32.940 | of genetically foreign cells creates a permanent connection that contributes to the survival
00:53:38.380 | of both individuals and it's just it's remarkable how God engineered just that connection that
00:53:45.020 | bond between the mother and the child not only just you know emotionally but actually
00:53:51.660 | at a very the most basic granular and cellular and molecular level it is just absolutely
00:53:58.020 | outstanding and because of that fact some people are using that that that that that
00:54:07.540 | because we know that the baby's blood and DNA and and cells can be found in the mother's
00:54:16.580 | bloodstream there is what's called non-invasive prenatal testing so they they take advantage
00:54:23.540 | of the fact that they can they can find the baby's DNA in the mom's blood because there
00:54:29.820 | are invasive techniques where you can actually go in and like through amniocentesis or chorionic
00:54:34.780 | villus sampling very invasive techniques and they actually are at risk to the baby but
00:54:39.660 | now they've discovered that they can just get a blood sample from mom a routine blood
00:54:44.740 | sample and say okay does this baby have any genetic abnormalities okay they were meant
00:54:52.380 | to be a way to help the baby what we're finding is that a lot of these screens that look for
00:55:00.220 | rare disorders are usually wrong especially the ones that are most rare I've written about
00:55:07.820 | this if you're interested it's actually really quite sad because it's becoming kind of an
00:55:14.060 | arms race between these technologies and I think something that was meant to be helpful
00:55:20.660 | has really turned to be harmful and so what we're seeing is that babies like Down syndrome
00:55:27.940 | I'm showing you the karyotype of them as you remember these are the chromosomes so babies
00:55:31.660 | with Down syndrome have an extra chromosome 21 that's why it's called trisomy 21 they
00:55:38.620 | have three chromosome 21 instead of two and similarly there's other trisomy disorders
00:55:43.700 | like trisomy 13 or 18 in which chromosome 13 or 18 has now three instead of two and
00:55:51.060 | this I am very passionate about this because I am reminded of Exodus 411 when Moses says
00:55:58.220 | no I can't go to Pharaoh and God says but who gave man his mouth who makes him deaf
00:56:04.660 | or mute who gives him sight or makes him blind is it not I the Lord we go back to the beginning
00:56:10.180 | God created us created us for a purpose we are wonderfully fearfully and wonderfully
00:56:15.340 | made he designs everything about us he determines what type of DNA we have and he determines
00:56:22.660 | how long he has ordained every single one of our days and so what's happening is that
00:56:28.620 | a lot of these babies once they're diagnosed with these disorders they are not given a
00:56:33.820 | chance we know that a lot of these babies in some cases up to 70 and 80 percent of them
00:56:40.300 | are never given a chance to life and they are literally being thrown away because they're
00:56:46.860 | thought of as not valuable and I want to remind you that even in cases of trisomy 13 and 18
00:56:54.660 | you will often hear physicians say that these are fatal disorders fatal disorders and but
00:57:01.300 | when you actually look at the science we see that they're they might be life-limiting but
00:57:05.980 | they're hardly legal or incompatible with life some of the most recent papers show that
00:57:12.220 | that that there's significant longer-term survival is possible with select patients
00:57:17.300 | especially receive the right treatment these papers combined show that even if you don't
00:57:22.300 | do anything some of these babies will live to 10 years of age others if you they offer
00:57:26.780 | the right interventions especially in cardiac cases they can live anywhere from 11 to 53
00:57:33.020 | years of age will there be will there be quality of life issues yes but it's just remembering
00:57:39.740 | that God holds every these are his children he designed them and for however long they
00:57:46.820 | might live there is always what's called perinatal palliative care and perinatal hospice where
00:57:53.380 | parents can they receive healing without a cure if there isn't a cure like we've talked
00:57:59.220 | about like outside the womb a treatment or if there isn't a treatment inside the womb
00:58:03.780 | that this provides a safe place for families to meet their child face to face the child
00:58:08.260 | that they were given by God the gift and to be parents for however long their child may
00:58:13.180 | survive he ordains our days he ordains everything he is in control and we have put together
00:58:22.380 | a website called prenatal diagnosis dot org to prove so that parents understand just really
00:58:30.420 | understand from a from a life affirming perspective just how beautiful every that their child
00:58:36.500 | is no matter what diagnosis they get and I'm just going to end with this slide God designed
00:58:43.460 | each of us to be unique we are magnificent from the moment of conception it is nothing
00:58:49.180 | short of a miracle and God created each one of us for a purpose and we were created to
00:58:55.420 | glorify God and I love this psalm it's just the most beautiful thing let everything that
00:59:02.900 | has breath praise the Lord we were created to glorify God and Jesus came into the world
00:59:08.420 | in the same way as we did with the purpose of glorifying the Father in heaven by conquering
00:59:13.300 | sin dying on the cross saving sinners just like you and me and I my prayer is that we
00:59:20.540 | we look at every child the way that God that God created through the eyes of Christ with
00:59:26.660 | humility with wonder with awe compassion and love from the very moment of conception up
00:59:33.820 | until natural death when he says it's time so I thank you for your time and I'd be happy
00:59:39.620 | to answer any questions.
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