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Science on Tap
Science On Tap – Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy. Join for an interview (now a full-on tradition) with Mary Roach, a friend of Science on Tap, about her latest book.
The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available—sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies, and breasts from petroleum by-products.
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 interviews with patients, physicians, pathologists, engineers, and scientists, Roach immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable, and surreal quest to build a new you.
Mary Roach is the author of the New York Times bestsellers STIFF, SPOOK, BONK, GULP, GRUNT, and PACKING FOR MARS. Mary has written for National Geographic, Wired, and The New York Times Magazine, among others, and her TED talk made the TED 20 Most Watched list. She has been a guest editor for Best American Science and Nature Writing and a finalist for the Royal Society’s Winton Prize.