On August 19, 1999, a photograph taken during fetal surgery in Nashville, Tennessee, went around the world. It showed a tiny hand emerging from the womb and apparently closing around the surgeon’s finger. The baby was Samuel Armas, who was just 21 weeks into gestation.
Samuel had been diagnosed with spina bifida, a congenital malformation that affects the development of the spinal column. Doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center performed surgery while he was still inside his mother’s womb, with the aim of repairing the lesion.
Photographer Michael Clancy was documenting the procedure when he captured the moment. The image was dubbed “The Hand of Hope” (“The Hand of Hope”) and became one of the best-known medical photographs of the past several decades.
Although it has often been said that Samuel “grabbed” the doctor’s finger voluntarily, the photograph alone does not make it possible to determine exactly what happened. What can be seen is the baby’s hand around the surgeon’s finger, in a scene that lasted only a few moments.
Samuel was born on December 2, 1999, at 36 weeks of gestation. Over the years, the photograph continued to accompany him, and he himself eventually spoke about what it meant for his life.
“When I see that photo, the first thing I think about is how special and fortunate I am that God used me in that way”, Samuel said in a 2009 interview.
As a teenager, he also played wheelchair basketball. The photograph that had shown his hand before he was born ended up being just the beginning of a story that Samuel continued writing over the following decades.