What they learn in Med School

Every so often I search the web for 'holoprosencephaly' just to see if anything new has come up. A week or so ago I came across the blog of a medical student who posted about encountering severe case of HPE in a terminated pregnancy. The baby had severe facial deformities but no chromosomal anomalies. This med student was amazed that otherwise the body was perfectly normal and was even born alive. She noted that she is unlikely to ever come across HPE again in her career. I posted a comment to her blog, just to let her know that not all HPE births are so severe and told her a little about HPEkid. The student wrote back that she never knew that HPE's could live! "We were always taught otherwise". This is pretty depressing to hear; that even in this era of so much better diagnosis and information, med schools are still teaching students that HPE = death. I totally understand that the VAST majority of instances HPE do result in death of the fetus. But doctors are trained, hopefully, to treat the living and it would be nice if they knew that there is a substantial population of HPE kids out there who do lead meaningful lives.