Fetal Surgery of spina bifida is today a valid alternative to abortion

Fetal Surgery of spina bifida is today a valid alternative to abortion


Once again, scientific research moves in favor of life. From today open the maternal uterus to operate a fetus affected by spina bifida and proceed with pregnancy is no longer a crazy idea. A study on fetal surgery shows that children with spina bifida treated with this procedure are more likely to walk without help and are exposed to a lower risk of developing hydrocephalus.

Surveys reveal that nine out of ten women choose abortion when they learn that the child has this serious flaw. For the remaining ones, the most common option is to wait until birth to intervene, when the damage is irreversible. The research, published in the "New England Journal of Medicine" and taken from the Spanish daily ABC, is based on the experience of 183 pregnancies. The study shows that by intervening in fetal surgery, the need to insert a valve to reduce hydrocephalus after birth has fallen to 30%.

Antinolo Guillermo, director of the Fetal Medicine Unit of the hospital in Seville, considers the American study "the best news of the last few years", regretting the fact that most women choose to abort only because they do not have adequate (or specifically wrong) information .

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22 answers

- Michele Santambrogio
March 14, 2011
It is certainly good news, but I do not think that changes anything to the abortionists. They are interested in governing on man, dedicating those who live and those who do not. According to you then, will they want to stop the financial empire they are building?

- Joseph
March 14, 2011
These news are the proof that the eugenics and the false pietism that accompany euthanasia and abortion will do nothing else but to make medicine regress: what would have happened if the various Pasteur, Jenner, Sabin, etc. had they simply surrendered to the incurability of illnesses, preferring to "avoid unnecessary suffering" to their patients?

    - Lucy
March 14, 2011
I add: what would Galileo have done without the Christian faith and therefore without the desire to want to know how He had thought the world?

        - Elias
March 15, 2011
Obviously we will never know it, but certainly I see no evidence in the history of science that having no Christian faith makes us less curious about the structure of the world. The same quote by Einstein that appears in the header of this site is an example.

        - Mandi
March 15, 2011
In fact Einstein was a believer, like all great scientists in history. It was a deist, that is, it did not belong to a religious confession, nor to the Christian God. But it is obvious that he did not think like you. There are thousands of writings in which he reiterates his faith in God, in the immensely superior spirit that is hidden behind reality. Of course he believed that he had never revealed himself to man, even if, on the other hand, he was very esteeming Jesus Christ very much.



- Elias
March 15, 2011
@Mandi
Absolute generalizations ("all great scientists") are always false.
But staying on Einstein for his autograph and very clear writing turns out that he
- he did not believe in a personal god
- he did not believe in a god who was a judge or moral source or entered into human affairs
- declared himself not atheist, hardly pantheist, closer to agnosticism
- admired the "god of Spinoza" and believed in a god that he was in practice the order and rationality of the universe
- defined the correspondence between human and the structural rationality of the world as miraculous
- used a colorful language in which he talked about a god playing dice or making the world one way and not another
Therefore he did not believe that there was a personal subject that would reveal itself, but that there was a marvelous -mathematical order- that we could investigate.
I would like to point out that apart from a certain nineteenth-century veteroscientism, any atheistic or agnostic rationalist makes metaphysical assumptions (my intellect exists, my rationality is able to interpret and predict the world, the empirical principle or falsification), Popper himself he underlined its necessity in the scientific method. The marvel and admiration of Einstein for this structural correspondence is the same as all scientists, beyond which the same concept is expressed "God does not play dice" or "I expect a mathematically understandable determinism".
A sense of wonder that I share, together with the great consideration - which I have already expressed - for the ethical message of Jesus, despite - as Einstein - I consider ethics a strictly human question.

- Lucy
March 16, 2011
Interesting as on every topic you are forced to reductionism ... "is nothing but". So now you've managed to say that Einstein was not a believer because all scientists have expressions like his, all - even atheist rationalists - talk about God and his regular world, the "spirit that manifests itself behind nature", the "Knowing your thoughts" etc. (or also: "Science, contrary to a widespread opinion, does not eliminate God. Physics must even persecute theological ends, as it must not only know how nature is, but also to know why nature is like this and not in another way, with the intent to get to know if God had other choices in mind when he created the world "(Holdon, The Advance of Science and Its Burdens, Cambridge University Press , New York 1986, page 91) Returning to your reductionism, of Jesus you say: "it was not great because so many men have spoken like him", of Christianity "was nothing that as so many religions are like this" etc. Religion always brings you to reduce and to dilute. I bet that even the man "is nothing but" ... right? Not to mention the planet Earth? And our universe? Perhaps "is nothing but one in a thousand?". The sense of wonder is also shared by the thousands of Christian science men who have changed history. Do you want me to leave the list? But I would not upset your rationalism .. And this contrasts with your self-styled wonder. Your underlining on Einstei, albeit very trivial, only reiterate what I have already said: he did not believe in a god revealed and consequently in religion. It was a deist, that is, the God professed by non-traditionally religious scientists, that intelligence that they also recognize must be at the basis of reality. And up to here I can agree with them (of course not, make a reason). But they are too busy with their heads up to understand what happened here 2000 years ago.


- Elias
March 16, 2011
I ask to give the right value to the words: Einstein was a believer, I am a believer, you are a believer. Everyone has beliefs, the point is a believer in what.

- Einstein believed in a harmonious and rational natural order, "miraculously" intelligible. He called him God and expressed himself in terms of his playing dice, his thoughts, his freedom of action and at the same time reiterated that he was not a personal god.
It is an expression of that passion and wonder for the apparent rational structure of the world - metaphysical assumption - that all scientists share, and which is the basis of curiosity about reality.
I do not see why I should be upset in anything by believing scientists to share it, in fact it seems to me an essential ingredient.
The fact remains that Einstein, devoid of Christian faith, has also expressed and professed his curiosity for this order, which in order to return to fire retorts to the hypothesis on Galileo, or -suppong- on men of science in a broad sense.
Finally, out of respect for me, I invite you not to pretend to teach me what I think, believe or feel. It is useless and insulting.

- Lucy
March 16, 2011
His playing "dice" is an excerpt of a phrase used in a way of speaking. You can not rely on it to understand the meaning. There is a flood of letters in which he addresses the problem much more thoroughly. Einstein, devoid of atheist faith, manifested and professed his curiosity towards this order of nature by binding him inexorably to a very definite and non-smoky concept of God as you would have it were you to justify your irreligious position. Galileo was the inventor of the scientific method and having admitted to having started this path thanks to his faith in the Christian God, it is logical to think that without this cause he would not have had this approach. On the other hand it was not like this in every other culture in the world, only a Christian man could have this openness to reality, trusting in the Logic of the Transcendent as he loved to repeat. Galileo in strings, stones and woods, objects considered vulgar then, recognized the hand of the Creator. Studying them, he understood that he could recognize the laws of Creation. From them (from the inclination of wood) came the laws of the inclined plane, etc. This love of reality and the trust of His presence in it led to the invention of modern science. The pantheist love of nature was not enough because Galilei wanted to discover him, the laws with which he made the world (words taken also by Einstein: "I want to know how God created this world, I want to know his thoughts, as for the rest, they are only details "(Einstein: Thoughts of a Curious Man, Mondadori '97) The rest, that is, what you have in mind dear Elia, are details.

- EnricoBai
March 15, 2011
You're wrong, Elia. The idea of ​​monotheism and in particular of Christianity was the basis on which the curiosity towards the world could develop in a technological way, namely the birth of the scientific method. Just read any of Galileo's writing to see that he was animated by the Gospel and his faith. Also on this site there is a very interesting article: http://www.uccronline.it/2010/11/23/lorigine-della-scienza-e-nel-cristianesimo/

- Michele Santambrogio
March 15, 2011
I doubt Elijah that you know the history of science and I doubt you know the opinion of the historians of science ... One can not doubt instead that the scientific method was born only and exclusively in Christian Europe. Not in the oriental culture, not in the Islamic culture, not in the Greek one (scientific method !!), not in the Roman one, not in the pagan one and obviously not in the atheist one, which until now has only been able to bring racism, eugenics and scientism.




- Elias
March 16, 2011
@ Michele and @ Enrico
Let me nod on the history of science as it has been defined in the bed of our Western civilization, and even then fundamentally of Christian civilization.
This is not the point under discussion.
Lucy states: "without Christian faith Galileo would not have had the desire to know the profound organization of the world"
I reply pointing to the head of this same site the thought of a great scientist -for much of the popular culture THE scientist- non-Catholic, not Christian and who did not even believe in a personal, ethical, historical god who had enough wonder and interest for the laws and the order of the world to be invested with practically the whole definition of one's own religiosity.
I could also indicate Max Planck, who had a very similar position, or many other great scientists who never wanted to give the curiosity and passion for the order and structure of the universe the label of "religion" or maybe even of "theory behind".
Again: the point is not what contribution has been given by Christian culture - or from Arabic mathematics, or from Greek, or from Babylonian astronomy - to the birth of modern science. It is if the Christian faith is a necessity for the scientific curiosity of the individual. I took my counterexample without looking more in the same page where I read Lucy's post.

- Lucy
March 16, 2011
So run away once again ... talking about morality you said that you did not care to know where it came from to be able to use it (anti-scientific and sly because you would know where your research would lead you). Now you say that you do not care to know where science is born but only if the Christian faith is necessary for it (so try not to take a position on the birth of science, university, hospitals etc .. in the Christian context). Your games are discovered dear Elijah. Plank did not think at all like Einstein, believer in an immanent God and not transcendent (and therefore totally different from you not you want to pull it for the jacket): MaX Plank: "Nothing prevents us, indeed our intellectual nature tending to a unitary conception of the world demands it, to identify among them the two powers operating on everything, yet full of mystery, the ordering of the world of science and the God of religions "
(Selvaggi, Planck: science, philosophy and religion, Fratelli Fabbri Editori, Milan, 1965, page 163). Again: "In any direction and for how far we can see, we find nowhere a contradiction between religion and science, but rather a full agreement right at the most decisive points". (Selvaggi, Planck: science, philosophy and religion, Fratelli Fabbri Editori, Milan, 1965, page 255).

- Elias
March 16, 2011
I would like you to read more carefully what I write, not what you think I write. Distinguishing problems does not mean "running away", but only requiring everyone to be treated properly.
On ethics in response to someone who claimed that an unbeliever in an ethical god should first of all justify the nature and existence of the principles of good and evil, I replied that they are two different problems. One is the human ethical elaboration on the basis of what we feel right and of the principles we feel as human, another is the study (anthropological, biological, mathematical) on how certain principles seem to us to be instinctive.
I never said that I do not care where science is born historically or conceptually, I said that your statement "what Galileo would have done without the Christian faith and therefore without the desire to want to know how He had thought the world" poses an implication that

- a) in the specific case of counterfactual hypothesis it is not verifiable
b) is not reflected in the examples, even very popular, of scientists whose scientific curiosity for the world has no basis in the Christian concept of God, but rather in hypothetical metaphysical cases of a rational nature.


- I gave the example of Planck just as a scientist with a position different from that of Einstein in relation to human religions (he believed in an immanent god, ethical and benevolent, not personal or Christian, he had repeatedly spent on the conciliability and independence of science and religion), but that as Einstein
stressed the need for an initial (metaphysical) act of faith for a scientist:
- "Anybody who has been seriously engaged in the scientific work of any kind of realizations that goes beyond the entrance to the gates of the temple of science. It is a quality which the scientist can not dispense with. "
this initial faith can not be faith in the rational god
"For believers, God is in the beginning, and for the physicists" To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view. "
As per your own quotation and unlike Einstein, Planck then felt the need to unify in retrospect a god of ethics, of religions, of symbols, with the rational principle of the world.
But do not you see the methodological difference with your assertion that Galileo would need a faith in the Christian god to be curious about the rational order?

- Lucy
March 16, 2011
I think you are ably running for cover, as you use to say ... Does it make you itchy that Galileo admits that he began to "scientifically" tackle the study of nature precisely in the cause of his Christian faith? He told him that without it he would have done nothing: "In my scientific discoveries I learned more with the help of divine grace than with telescopes" (Galilei, Lettere, Einaudi, Torino, 1978). Now you will probably go on to argue - as Richard Dawkins tried to do - that Mendel was really the father of modern genetics. but he was actually obliged to enter the monastery. But you, as a good Italian, you will also add that it was not even Catholic and had only a certain metaphysics that you too and "all the scientists" (just to play your game). Then I will go to Pasteur, Maxwell, Volta, Galvani, Lemaitre, Lavoisier, Ampere, Gauss, Faraday, Stoppani, Kelvin, Faà di Bruno, Mivart, Fleming, Fermi, in Steno, in Kepler, in Copernicus, in Ptolemy, in Boyle, etc. ... For each of these Christians, Catholics, Deists and believers, you will have your diluting theory ... all the greatest revolutionaries of science in reality thought of it as you and Odifreddi.

- Elias
March 16, 2011
No itching, even if the excerpt does not really mean what you're supporting.
But if tomorrow an Ethiopian mathematician, let's say Muslim, won a Nobel Prize declared "I have won thanks to God, to the prophet and my studies of the Koran", you - without prejudice to the undoubted quality of work - would take the declaration as an objective truth or as a subjective elaboration of one's motivations and path?
And you would not ask yourself if the same person in different conditions or another person with different cultural path could have reached the same results?
My opinion - as of many others - is that the curiosity about the rationality of the real world is a purely human trait, and that from many other civilizations, religions and cultures we could eventually produce "a Galileo", or "a Newton "Or" an Einstein ". If the power and rapidity of expansion of a culture - as it has been for the Western one from which we originate - are sufficient, there may not be time and way for others to do so in isolated conditions.

- Lucy
March 16, 2011
Elijah, you went to play with "if" and with "but", avoiding to recognize what has actually been. It is another easy game of professional reductionists who delude themselves by scratching their pruritra in this way. The church teaches us to stay on reality, what happens and take position. It is evident that those who are far from the church can only drown themselves in ephemeral speculations.

A Galileo was born in the Church and nowhere else. It is the only place where he could be born. The scientific method is not born for your trivial "curiosity" towards the world, present massively in the Greek world. It is born in a place - and the inventor confirms it - in which nature is esteemed, created because the Creator is esteemed, because we want to approach Him. You and your culture can not help but be curious about a book, for what is written there, you adore the pages and marvel at what is written there. But I read this book to know the thought of the one who wrote it, I love it because it is motivated by a love that transcends the fact itself and the more I know the author and the more I get to understand the connections he makes in a way that you can not afford to do. Every sentence I find written I put it in relation with the others because it is the result of a single mind. The more I learn to study the book the more the wonder progresses, the easier it is for me to glimpse the author's thought. On the other hand, the more you experience, the more you are frustrated because you can not afford to give this marvel an adequate meaning. It is a stupid, senseless wonder because it has no end. Your search is stupid because you are looking for something that you already think can not be found. Research has no meaning in itself, but gives value to it as it is assumed that what is sought exists. One can not be an atheist if not being a reductionist, that is, if not by limiting this wonder as much as possible. You are a further confirmation. Stay in reality without running into your guesswork and you will see that you will begin to appreciate reality all in another way. I start from a Presence you from an absence and therefore it is useless lately to leave.