Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

15JUSTIN LEIBERBeyond RejectionWorms began his spiel: "People often think that it ought to be simple enough to justmanufacture an adult human body, like building a house. Or a helicopter. You'd thinkthat, well, we know what chemicals are involved and how they go together, how theyform cells according to DNA templates, and how the cells form organ systems regulatedby chemical messengers, hormones, and the like. So we ought to be able to build' a fullyfunctional human body right up from scratch."Worms moved so that he blocked their view of the jogger. H brought his drainedcoffee cup down for emphasis."And, of course, we could build a human body up from scratch theoretically,anyhow. But no one ever has. In fact, no one has ever eve started to. De Reinziemanufactured the first fully functional human ce I-muscle tissue-in the middle of the lastcentury, about 2062 or so. And shortly after that the major varieties were cooked up. Andeven then it wasn't really manufactured from scratch. De Reinzie, like all the rest, builtsome basic DNA templates from actual carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and so on, or ratherfrom simple sugars and alcohols. But then he grew the res from these. That's growth, notmanufacture. And nobody's come closer to building an organ than a lab that made amillimeter of stomach wall for several million credits a couple of decades ago."I don't want to bother you with the mathematics," he continued looking away fromTerry. "But my old professor at Tech used to estimateExcerpt from Beyond Rejection by Justin Leiber. Copyright © 1980 by Justin Leiber. Reprintedby permission of Ballantine Books, a Division of Random House, Inc.