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“IT is no longer possible to see the embryo or fetus as the larval stage of human development,” write Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson. In their new book, The Fetal Matrix, the two scientists extend and enrich what is now commonly known as the “Barker hypothesis”, named after biologist David Barker of the University of Southampton, UK. He was the first to propose the notion that, far from being insulated from the outside world, a fetus is deeply sensitive to the environment around it in the womb, right down to the balance of nutrients its mother consumes (Â鶹´«Ã½, 30…