I am not a scientist and medical descriptions are, for me, narrow switchback trails straight to nausea. Today, however, I was caught up in a story on NPR about regrowing a trachea for a man whose own trachea was blocked by a malignant tumor.
The story itself was like 70's scifi and involved laser-cut plastic molds of the man's own laser-scanned trachea and stem cells from his hip growing like expanding bubbles blown by various hormones, etc. until a new, presumably functional, trachea was ready for implantation.
It was insanely wondrous in a prosaic, I've-seen-this-movie-before fashion.
That reaction worries me. Am I too jaded with images and too uneducated, too uncurious, to field a sense of wonder for this?
I've felt, smelled, and hear many, many machines working in labs doing things that I can't imagine. Part of me suddenly feels that if I'd been more attuned to the physical sciences, I would be a better writer, with a greater capacity for imagination and wonder because I would have a greater understanding of what happens in the heart of the opaque functionality.
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