Two summers ago, scientists removed a tiny piece of flesh from Philip
Ball’s arm and turned it into a rudimentary “mini-brain.” The
skin cells, removed from his body, did not die but were instead
transformed into nerve cells that independently arranged themselves
into a dense network and communicated with each other, exchanging the
raw signals of thought. This was life—but whose? In his most
mind-bending book yet, Ball makes that disconcerting question the
focus of a tour through what scientists can now do in cell biology and
tissue culture. He shows how these technologies could lead to
tailor-made replacement organs for when ours fail, to new medical
advances for repairing damage and assisting conception, and to new
ways of “growing a human.” For example, it might prove possible to
turn skin cells not into neurons but into eggs and sperm, or even to
turn oneself into the constituent cells of embryos. Such methods would
also create new options for gene editing, with all the attendant moral
dilemmas. Ball argues that such advances can therefore never be about
“just the science,” because they come already surrounded by a host
of social narratives, preconceptions, and prejudices. But beyond even
that, these developments raise questions about identity and self,
birth and death, and force us to ask how mutable the human body really
is—and what forms it might take in years to come.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780226676173
Publisert
2019
Utgiver
Vendor
University of Chicago Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter