The Body: A Guide for Occupants

How much it would cost in materials to build a human body: Sixty-one percent of the body is oxygen and 10% is hydrogen—these, along with nitrogen, are inexpensive. Purified carbon, however, would cost nearly $70,000, and calcium, phosphorus, and potassium together would cost $73,800. The remaining 1% of body weight is made of trace amounts of thorium, molybdenum, vanadium, copper, and a few dozen other elements. The total cost to construct, for example, actor Benedict Cumberbatch—not counting labor and tax—is $151,578.46. 

Humans don’t yet know how to build a simple cell, much less an entire body: “The only thing special about the elements that make you is that they make you. That is the miracle of life” (4). The human body contains “7 billion billion billion” atoms (5). In the time it takes to read a short sentence, the body manufactures 1 million red blood cells. Stretched out thinly, the lungs would cover a tennis court. All the DNA in the all the cells of the body, lined up, would reach billions of miles beyond Pluto. 

The body is built from genetic instructions contained in the microscopic strands of DNA at the center of cells, instructions that describe how to build the proteins that make up the body.