This is just the sort of thing Theodore Maiman said he had in mind when was interviewed 50 years ago, after being the first to successfully demonstrate the laser: medical procedures that would change or even save lives in ways as yet unimagined. This time, the laser has been used to perform surgery on an unborn fetus. Surgeons at the University of Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital reported they have performed the first-ever in utero surgery on a fetus . A rare tumor diagnosed about halfway through the pregnancy via ultrasound was removed from the roof of the mouth using laesr technology. A few months later, the baby was born at full-term and healthy. Never mind that one newspaper at the time called Maiman’s pioneering ruby laser “a solution in search of a problem.” Applications have been developed in nearly every facet of life, and the list of medical solutions that lasers provide is impressive. Starting from the beginning, medical applications of lasers were life-enh...