Replaceable You

Resumen del libro

Our bodies regenerate at a remarkable rate our skin replaces itself every month, our blood every four. You can remove ninety per cent of a liver and it'll still grow back to its original size (please do not try this at home). Others the brain, the heart, the eyes are more complicated.

These stay with us for life. So what do we do when they break down? For centuries, medicine has searched for answers sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs and crafting eye parts from jet canopies. And as technology has grown ever more ingenious, so have our solutions.

In Replaceable You, Mary Roach sets sail on the uncharted waters of regenerative medicine, exploring the remarkable advances and difficult questions prompted by the human body's failings:When and how does a person decide they'd be better off with a prosthetic than their existing limb?Is there a sensitive way to harvest tissue and bones from the deceased?Which animals might be the best organ donors? Through experiments and interviews with patients, physicians, pathologists, engineers and scientists, Roach immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable and surreal quest to build a new you.

Biografía del autor

Mary Roach nació en Hanover, New Hampshire. Su familia se trasladó a Etna, un pueblo dentro de la ciudad de Hanover, y Roach asistió al instituto Hanover High School y se licenció en Psicología por la Universidad Wesleyan en 1981. Después de la universidad, Roach se trasladó a San Francisco, California, y pasó unos años trabajando como redactora independiente. Su carrera como redactora comenzó en la oficina de asuntos públicos de la Sociedad Zoológica de San Francisco, donde elaboraba comunicados de prensa sobre temas como la cirugía de verrugas en elefantes. En sus días libres en la SFZS, escribía artículos como freelance para la revista dominical del San Francisco Chronicle, Image.