The Placenta: The Bridge of Life

Life support systems produced by the latest technology, used in most hospitals and valued at millions of dollars, are primitive and nearly useless when compared with a piece of flesh weighing only a few kilograms. This piece of flesh is the placenta, called by scientists "the real hero of birth".³⁶

At a particular time the embryo begins to take nutrients, oxygen and other material from the mother's blood. The placenta, which is created to supply all the needs of the developing foetus, acts as a bridge ensuring the passage of this material between the mother and the foetus (From the beginning of the third month, the embryo is called a foetus). The placenta is filled with soft blood vessels which will carry to the baby the nutrient material seeping from among the trophoblast cells; it sends all this nutrient material, oxygen, and important minerals such as iron and calcium that come from the mother, first to the umbilical cord and then to the capillary vessels of the foetus. Moreover, the placenta not only ensures the supply of nutrients needed for the metabolism of the foetus, it also chooses and transports to the foetus the nutrients needed for the formation of its tissues.³⁷Amino acids are required by the foetus for all kinds of syntheses (carbohydrates, nucleic acids the building blocks of DNA, fats, etc.)

The placenta selects these elements and takes them from the mother's blood. This is generally done by special carriers. It stores the elements, uses what is necessary for itself and sends a portion of them into the blood of the foetus. Besides the nutrients, ions pass through the placenta; two of these are especially important for the foetus, and it is necessary that they be stored in large quantities. Of these, one is iron, needed to increase the blood volume; the other is calcium, required for the development of the bones. The transfer of these elements is particularly effective: even if the mother has consumed little iron, the placenta extracts the amount required from the mother's blood, supplies the baby's needs and protects it from every kind of danger.³⁸

The placenta also expertly performs the reverse operation, carrying waste material from the foetus to the mother's blood.

It must not be forgotten that the placenta, which we have described as "choosing", "taking"' "storing" and "carrying" is a tissue composed of cells. It is the placenta which performs all the activities denoted by the verbs listed above; for example, it knows that there is a need for iron, and it is able to choose the element iron from among other substances and it knows how the iron it selects will be used. It is not a human being which has this knowledge but a collection of cells called the placenta. The cells which constitute the placenta recognize the material they need and are able to select it, and the fact that a cell can recognize an element is surely a miracle. In addition to recognizing this element, it is even more miraculous that it can take the appropriate material in the required amount and carry it to a particular location. The information given so far and that will follow must always be appreciated with this in mind.

The events that occur in the miracle of human creation indicate a consciousness displayed by the cells, and by the molecules and atoms that produce the cells. Indeed, this consciousness does not belong to any of them, but to God Who creates them and inspires in them the functions that they are to perform.

All the details we will examine in the following pages are also a clear proof of creation.