The amazing human body

Smole and I celebrated our finish Singapore-style with a very large 1kg chilli crab last night. Chilli crab must have some secret special qualities 'cos I woke up this morning practically pain-free. Climbing Mt Kinabalu made me walk funny for two weeks and it has only been three days since the marathon! I'm pleasantly surprised. The human body is amazing in the way it regenerates itself.

On one of our long runs, I asked Smole if it was possible to re-create a human brain since brain cells seem fairly simple in its structure. If we can grow nerve endings, why can't we create a simple brain that sends signals and controls the other parts of the body? We know what kind of signals the brain sends. Smole said that while it is possible to grow brain cells, it remains a mystery how the brain creates new connections, i.e. the process of learning. Hence, scientists haven't been able to create a self-functioning and self-renewing organ. The way we learn is mysterious: Eric for example has taught his brain to is wired such that he different hands for different functions, like throwing a baseball with his left, and batting with his right . Some of us are effectively bilingual; some of us not. Some seem born to learn, some take longer.

Sometimes we forget that the human body is still remarkably mysterious. We think that the human body is something like a car and going to the doctor is like going to the mechanic. We expect the doctor to have the diagnosis in black and white and to be all-knowing. But it is not like this at all. Amanda from London wrote in to BBC and asked why the hospitals took so long to diagnose the Russian ex-spy of Poloium-210 poisoning, as if it is so easy to tell what exactly is wrong when a person falls ill. Sure, now in the aftermath of this poisoning, everyone is testing for Polonium, but this is the way medicine is, it is a trial and error process rather than a process where you possess the blueprint to begin with, the way you do with a car.

I am all for pushing the frontiers of knowledge. It is better to know than to be ignorant, and the more you observe, the more experienced you will become. But I think it is imperative that we retain that sense of mystery and awe, because after all, we are not man-made products; after all, even if we don't have a blueprint, we do have a spark of the divine.