Lab workers at a flooded New Orleans hospital rescued 1400 embryos
in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last year by putting them on
boats in sealed canisters filled with liquid nitrogen. One of
those embryos, the first to be born, has now become a baby named Noah, joining his older brother who turned 1 just before the hurricane.
Test-tube ethics and questions of "when does life begin?" aside,
I think this is awfully cool, and a beautiful reminder of what happens
when people believe that what they do can make a difference. The
embryos almost didn't survive the storm. Special help was
requested, along with flat-bottomed boats necessary to keep the
canisters from tipping, to move the embryos
from the hospital where they had been stored, which had lost electrical
power due to the hurricane. The embryos were safely moved to
another hospital that did have power. And now one of them has
become a new life.
