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Born Twice
 
   BEST IMAGE DEPICTING SCIENCE OR TECHNOLOGY
        Photographer: Max Aguilera-Hellweg.  
 
"Here`s your picture, Max," said Dr. Joseph Bruner of Nashville`s Vanderbilt University Hospital.  With that, he gently lifted the right arm of the 24-week-old  fetus in Trish Switzer`s womb.
 
Doctors had detected spina bifida, which could cause the  child to suffer paralysis, incontinence and brain damage, and were performing experimental fetal surgery in an
attempt to repair the problem.
 
Max Aguilera-Hellweg was perched on a ladder, four feet off the ground, staring awestruck through his lens. "Society has never imagined operating on the unborn fetus - until now," he says. It may seem strange for a doctor to halt surgery, however briefly, for the benefit of a photographer. But Aguilera-Hellweg, 44, is also a doctor-in-the-making. Despite a prestigious  photographic career (he won an Eisie last year, too), he will  enter Tulane University`s medical school this summer.
 
"As  much as I`ve enjoyed photographing guys saving other guys`  lives," he says, "I want to be the guy saving other guys` lives." Aguilera-Hellweg has photographed more than 150  surgeries, but as he squeezed off this shot, he suspected he  might have something special. "When the film came back  from the lab," he says, "I went straight to Home Depot and bought a fireproof safe to keep it in."
 
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