Protein Reincarnation
I’m deeply fascinated recently with the idea that life comes from life-or more realistically, life comes from death. And more personally, where did I come from? And more spiritually, have I been a cow, an insect, or a bacterium in a previous life?
If women are born with all the ova they’ll ever have, that means that half of me came from something of my grandmother’s, that she then passed on to my mother in the womb. Am I a piece of chicken? Or maybe a bean? Or a sloughed-off cell from the inside of her cheek? Or a bacterium?
And if it takes men about 74 days to mature their spermatozoa, what a fascinatingly microscopic idea that some little bit or speck that he ate was to become me. I picture a cheeseburger, or maybe some roast beef. Maybe a bit of bacon from his mother’s incredibly delicious green beans.
I realize this edges frighteningly close to the idea that I was not, in fact, delivered by stork or simple budding, but it’s somehow mind-boggling to consider all the forces and interactions and molecules and sequences that had to occur just to make me. Call it egotism or what you will, but some part of me-no, all parts of me-existed before I ever existed. Before even the concept or the thought of a me existed. In one form or another, at least. Everything’s connected to everything else.
that’s a mind-blowing idea, sort of like the one where we’ve all got a little piece of stardust inside us (inorganic chemistry - what a pain that was! :)).
btw, i think there’s new evidence showing women aren’t born w/ all their eggs: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15014492
I didn’t see where else to comment on your single-payer link, so I’m commenting here.
We used to hear the same argument for why there should be only one kind of soap and one kind of car. But what is lost is competitiveness and the fruits of that. With one payer in healthcare, there would be no competition to force better performance out of that payer. Yeah, one soap manufacturer “could” be more efficient, but in the real world it never is.
I’m all for making sure everyone gets healthcare. I just think that a single payer system will cost more and be less responsive. I also think that it will have a negative impact on the quality of care over time.
Like your blog and your concern.
Hi. I don’t know why I’m posting this, but I was doing a search for something and found myself on your site here (not even remotely what I was looking for) and thought I’d like to comment. =)
It’s an interesting idea — and although molecules in our bodies are often broken apart and reassembled into different things and from different pieces, it’s a cool thought about the simple idea of tracing the actual MATTER of your body back to someone or something else.
Concerning that, and relating to a comment made by someone before me: it is reasonably safe to say that all of you was once part of a star. Other than Hydrogen and perhaps some Lithium, nothing in your body could possibly have been made anywhere but a star. Stars are the only places where the conditions are right such that elements heavier than Hydrogen and Helium can be constructed. In its death throes, a very massive star can create elements like Carbon and Nitrogen and Oxygen and Iron — and when it dies, it dies in a massive explosion, outshining any galaxy for a short while,
producing everything else that you and I and every living thing is made of.
I think it’s a beautiful idea — and I just took an exam on it, so I thought I’d share. =)