Monday, November 21, 2011

Have You Ever Wondered?

Yale scientist, Alexander Tsiaras, uses his training and experience in art, science, technology and journalism to share a powerful medical visualization, showing human development from conception to birth and beyond. Alexander Tsiaras has made a career of using advances in visualization technology to offer vivid tours of the human body. His books have taken readers inside the human heart, the kidneys and vascular system, and also human reproduction. Back in 2002, Tsiaras published From Conception to Birth: A Life Unfolds, a book that offers a “visual diary of fetal development.” Now, nearly a decade later, he brings that visual diary to video at a conference affiliated with TED.




What’s equally impressive is how he describes what he’s learned from doing these complex visualizations.  He mentions more than once the “divinity” of the process of human development, and about how, even as a mathematician, the extraordinary complexity of human development is many orders of magnitude more than we can comprehend. In other words...human development is miraculous. Each human being is uniquely designed, each of us has our own one-of-a-kind characteristics (our own unrepeatable DNA, fingerprints, etc.), we defy the odds of existence yet despite the odds against us, we exist.....


"Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering." -St. Augustine


(left to right: Day 1 of conception, 8 week baby, 8 month baby, newborn baby, adult)

I'll never stop being amazed by the fact that each of one us started out as this small, vulnerable trace of a human being and yet from Day 1 - at the moment of conception - managed to have all of the information necessary to grow into the steadfast, established adults we know ourselves as today.

Have you stopped and thought about just how carefully and wonderfully made you are? Don't let the world downplay your value....there has never been and can never be another you. You are not "just another human being" or insignificant...you are set apart(Jeremiah 1:5). You are the only you there has ever or will ever be. You are the first and last of you. You can never be repeated. You are a prodigy. Knowing how remarkably invaluable and immeasurable you are should help you to see others with the same value and respect. Though we are all unique we all share one thing in common....our humanity, and in turn, our intrinsic value. May this spark a greater understanding and appreciation for Life...not just of your own life, but the lives of all human beings from the moment a new human is created at conception until natural death. We fight to save endangered species everyday...aren't we all exactly that as individuals? The rarest of the rare? Saving one human life means saving an entire species from total extinction. I think each one of us are worth fighting for and on the pages of history I want it to read that I did all I could in this fight for human Life because I believe each individual is irreplaceable. 



(sources) LiveAction.org Google Images TEDTalks