While science has pegged the cell as the essential unit of life, it still cannot explain how they coordinate to make the body function, how the genes and chromosomes in the body have been transmitted from generation to generation in the DNA, how the body survives – like a machine – without needing many repairs for decades and how it runs only on water and food? No one has been able to specify where life actually begins. Even with all the necessary material at hand, how does one create life? While the cost of elements can be debatable, it is the actual act of building a human that is still baffling. They estimated a cost of £96,546.79, just for the elements, not counting labour and tax costs.Īnother estimate by the US PBS network’s science program Nova estimated the cost of building a human at a mere $168 in 2012. They calculated a requirement of 59 elements, with 6 elements – hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorous – needed in large quantities. The UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry took on a bizarre task in 2013 of estimating what it would take to build actor Benedict Cumberbatch. Scientists have been trying to figure out what would it take to create a human right from scratch.
Moreover, it is a journey that each and everyone should embark on to understand their bodies better. It tells us why it is tough to manage a diet, and what role millions of microbes, living on and inside us, play. It helps discover more about the body, right from the various organs such as the heart and brain, down to the hormones that play a vital role in regulating emotions and the sex drive, how sleep plays an ambiguous, role in keeping one healthy. The Body: A Guide for Occupants (2019), by Bill Bryson is an entertaining account of facts that try to explain the functioning of the human body. Even scientists and doctors, who devote their lives to studying it, find it profoundly strange, complex, and even baffling at times. From the way it functions as a whole, to the individual parts of the body, we never stop to think and consider how it works.
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