The Beginning of Life

Against a dark background, a pinkish ovarian follicle swells until an egg bursts forth and sails along the convoluted lining of the fallopian tube like a miniature moon over a mountain range. Sperm, their tails thrashing, cluster together like salmon awaiting a signal to leap a waterfall. Cells, pulsing with life, divide and reproduce. Finally, in a scene reminiscent of the fadeout of 2001, a fetus, its already human form visible through a transparent amniotic sac, fills the screen. These spectacular images (see following pages) are not the products of a Hollywood special effects department. They are frames from a half-hour film that dramatically shows the actual process of conception and the earliest stages of life.

The remarkable movie is the result of an ingenious union of science and cinematography achieved by Dr. Motoyuki Hayashi, head of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Tokyo's Toho University School of Medicine. Using advanced diagnostic instruments and time-lapse photography, Hayashi spent two years and $55,000 working in the university's laboratories and clinics to produce his masterpiece. His key tool was the culdoscope, invented in 1942 by Dr. Albert Decker, who is now with New York's Fertility Research Foundation. The instrument is a 12-in.-long tube, about the diameter of a pencil, containing lenses and its own light source. It can be inserted into the body to provide microscopic views of the internal organs and processes, and can serve as a long lens for a camera. It has proved invaluable for determining some of the reasons for female infertility. Introduced through the vagina of a patient under a local anesthetic (see diagram), the culdoscope gives doctors a sperm's-eye view of the female reproductive system, and has enabled them to discover several previously unknown defects that can prevent conception and pregnancy.

On Location. After learning culdoscopy from Decker in 1951, Hayashi returned to Japan, developed his own culdoscopic technique and enlisted a crew to help him with his film. Because the reproductive process is virtually the same in all mammals, Hayashi used rabbit and monkey stand-ins for shots that might have caused serious discomfort in human patients, or endangered them or their developing eggs. The resulting scenes (the ovary expelling an egg, for example) are indistinguishable from their human counterparts. Furthermore, human volunteers were used for the crucial scenes. The sequences showing fetal development in the womb were filmed on location--in--the uterus of a woman scheduled to undergo an abortion for medical reasons. They show the fetal heart, the serrated outline of the fetal spine and, finally, the fetus itself.

Hayashi, a perfectionist, is not fully satisfied with his excellent film; he believes that he has learned so much in producing it that he could do an even better job if he should ever have the financing--and the time--to produce a second. But he modestly concedes that his film should prove valuable as a teaching aid for medical students and for high school audiences as well. The Fertility Research Foundation agrees, and hopes to arrange for showings of the film on educational television in the U.S. That would be reward enough for Hayashi. Says he: "Having seen the film, youngsters will at least know to be awed by the value of life."

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