Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
How to Grow a Human: Adventures in How We Are Made and Who We Are

How to Grow a Human: Adventures in How We Are Made and Who We Are

Ball, Philip

Hardcover

CognitionEvolutionHistory & Philosophy of Science

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 022665480X
ISBN13: 9780226654805
Publisher: Univ Of Chicago Pr
Published: Oct 16 2019
Pages: 272
Weight: 1.45
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.20 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
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.

Also in

Cognition

View All