Human Bodily Repair: Imperfect Replacements, Aspirational Augmentation

Key Quotes

"fairly far along in the process of writing this book i was like is there anything that we humans have built or designed or cooked up that is 100 perfect or pretty much just does what the original part does and i thought okay the tears how about tears have we got a perfect artificial tear and i found this guy who works for tear lab and he's spent decades working on tears and we got onto a zoom call and i said okay so artificial tears he's like yeah they'll help for an hour or two but they kind of wash away the good stuff so we don't even have we can't really even replace tears so my cyborg dreams may not become a reality just yet"

Mary Roach explains that even in her extensive research for the book, she could not find a perfect artificial replacement for human tears. This highlights a limitation in current human body repair technology, suggesting that some seemingly simple bodily functions remain beyond our ability to replicate perfectly. Roach's personal reflection on her "cyborg dreams" underscores the gap between aspirational technological advancement and current practical capabilities.

"third degree burns are really tough because the cells that would regenerate from below like on a second degree burn those are destroyed so the body tries to heal by contracting by kind of pulling like a drawstring but there are ways now to um culture the person's skin off site so rather than waiting for the place that you took the skin to heal so you can take more skin uh you can take a biopsy and they can grow out these very thin layers of of the person's own skin there's spray on skin which uh you're spraying cells over the the wound area"

Regina G. Barber describes a current medical advancement for treating severe burns, explaining that skin can now be cultured off-site from a biopsy. This method bypasses the need to wait for donor skin sites to heal, allowing for faster and more extensive skin regeneration. Barber notes that this technique, including "spray on skin," offers a significant improvement over the body's natural, but often insufficient, healing processes for third-degree burns.

"the colon well when you think about it it makes a lot of sense you know it's tubular it's moist it's pink it's stretchy yeah right that's what you said in your book that that's a doctor was like yeah okay makes sense i can't think of any other uh body part that would do double duty as a vagina"

Mary Roach recounts a doctor's observation about the suitability of the colon for reconstructive surgery. Roach highlights the colon's physical characteristics--tubular, moist, pink, and stretchy--as making it a logical choice for creating a neovagina. This quote illustrates the innovative and sometimes surprising ways medical science repurposes existing bodily structures to address reconstructive needs.

"i showed up the surgeon wasn't there apparently on vacation and i'm like but we've come all the way from america to which the logical response would be well you're a couple of idiots but i was able to talk to another surgeon there who kind of showed me the images of the procedure it's not as is it's it's wrapped in skin it's not just a finger on a body i don't know why he chose to use the finger but i will say the penis at the after photo it looked quite normal except that it does actually bend at the knuckle in order to show how strong it was"

Mary Roach describes her experience attempting to document a penis reconstruction using a middle finger in Georgia. Roach notes the unexpected absence of the primary surgeon and the subsequent explanation from another doctor that the reconstructed penis was not a direct transplant but was wrapped in skin. Roach's observation about the penis bending at the knuckle and the accompanying photo of it holding a pitcher emphasizes the unusual nature and functional, albeit peculiar, success of the procedure.

"we're kind of at the wright brothers stage if you want to compare it to aviation which is those really exciting i mean the wright brothers my god they got the thing off the ground and down to the end of the pasture pretty cool but uh long way off from you know thousands of flights going back and forth every day"

A scientist at a bioprinting lab compares the current state of organ printing to the early days of aviation. The scientist explains that while bioprinting has achieved initial successes, like getting an aircraft off the ground, it is still far from widespread, routine application. This analogy, as relayed by Mary Roach, illustrates that significant advancements are still needed before bioprinted organs are ready for widespread implantation in humans.