Michael Clancy

Hand of Hope the Story Behind the Picture Michael Clancy

Photojournalist Michael Clancy captured the picture of a lifetime when Samuel reached from his mother's womb and squeezed the finger of his surgeon during fetal surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. The picture became embroiled in controversy when Dr. Joseph Bruner told Tennessean Newspaper reporter Bill Snyder, "Depending on your political point of view this is either Samuel Armas reaching out of the uterus and touching the finger of a fellow human, or it's me pulling his hand out of the uterus ... which is what I did." This book tells what really happened during Samuel's surgery and the extent the doctor and medical center would go to cover up the fact that Samuel simply came out from under the anesthesia too soon.