“WE’RE ONLY HUMAN”: ODE TO IMPERFECTION

Nathan H. Lents, PhD

When studying the human body, one can only stand in amazement. Countless people spend their lives studying it, writing Odes to the constellations you see in wonder when gazing at the human eye; the whisper of a longing sea in the chest; the musical rhythm of a pounding heart; the delicate architecture of arteries; the art in the paradox of the arms, between strength and delicacy.

However, Nathan Lents didn’t write an Ode to the human body. Or maybe he did, since its shortcomings are, even though, as you’ll see, not “short” at all, what, in fact, makes us human. Every cell, protein, molecule, and little letter in the genome has its own story to tell. Professor Nathan Lents is a scientist and author, who sits beside them, listens to their stories, and writes about them, shedding new light over the human body as a whole and in its nuances

All of time and all of natural selection have shaped our bodies like an old and bearded craftsman molds a block of clay into a masterpiece. The human body is strong, resilient, and clever (sometimes, anyways). We are indeed the best Evolution could master. But we soundly lack perfection, and Professor Nathan challenges the naïve thought that we are perfect.

Every Biology teacher mentions Evolution in the past tense, as if we were done evolving because we reached our perfect present shape. However, this is senseless to the fact that we are very flawed, and that Evolution is an ongoing and never stopping process.

I find it funny that we use the expression “I’m only human” as an excuse to fail, since I don’t think we fail because we are human. Instead, I believe we are human because we fail.

You are probably reading this without thinking that you are doing so with a retina that is so imperfect that is facing backwards instead of the logical forwards. You are reading this while ignoring the fact that the feet you’re standing on have way too many little pointless bones. Without thinking that your Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve takes an unnecessary loop and is three times longer than it should. That we are not quite adapted to upright walking, even though we have done it for millions of years, making intervertebral disks prone to herniating; knee ligaments like the ACL prone to tearing; and mesenteries prone to rupturing if you stand for too long. That our immune system sometimes attacks our own body when mistaking a peanut for a very dangerous pathogen; and that autoimmune diseases like Myasthenia Gravis, Lupus and Grave’s are a very cosa nostra, absent in any other species. That sinusitis and gastroenteritis are also a very human ailment, which aren’t (luckily for them) as common in any other species. That vegetarians get shortages of Vitamin B12 despite our gut bacteria producing it, because these bacteria are in the colon, while this Vitamin is absorbed in our small intestine.

Clearly, we are flawed creatures, since we are a product of an Evolution that works by the survival of the fittest, not of the perfect;

Natural Selection gave us so much, like our intricate brains capable of both creating String Theory and composing a masterpiece like Toxic, by Britney Spears. In turn, in a sense, we betrayed Evolution. We didn’t allow the Hourglass to correct the flaws in our Anatomy and Physiology: we corrected them ourselves. Or, rather, found ways to make those errors pointless, and save people with them regardless.

Was committing forever to this flawed design and creating drugs and surgeries to correct it a fair trade for our species? The