AROUND 350 years ago, the French philosopher René Descartes concluded
that the human body works on mechanical principles. He compared the illness and
discomfort caused by diseased organs to the way in which a machine grinds to a
halt when a single part breaks down. He reasoned that all machines can be
restored to working order by simply mending the broken component, and believed
that the same was true of our own bodies. This mechanistic view, which treats
the body as a sum of organs and tissues, still dominates Western medicine. Even
so, we rarely, if ever, think of the…
Cellular factories
23 November 1996
