Inquiring Minds

The Song of the Cell

This fall we will read. The Song of the Cell, by Siddhartha Mukherjee, published in 2022 (ASIN: B09RX45W14).

From the Amazon webpage: “The Song of the Celltells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are now using that knowledge to create new humans. The discovery of cells — and the reframing of the human body as a cellular ecosystem — announced the birth of a new kind of medicine based on the therapeutic manipulations of cells. A hip fracture, a cardiac arrest, Alzheimer’s dementia, AIDS, pneumonia, lung cancer, kidney failure, arthritis, COVID pneumonia — all could be reconceived as the results of cells, or systems of cells, functioning abnormally. And all could be perceived as loci of cellular therapies.

”Siddhartha Mukherjee is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University and a cancer physician and researcher. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning book The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, The Gene: An Intimate History,and The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science.

These are the reading assignments:

October 2: Prelude, Introduction, Chapters 1-4
October 16: Chapters 5-8
October 30: Chapters 9-13
November 13: Chapters 14-17
November 27: Chapters 18-22, Epilogue
 

Presenter Biography

Facilitator: Maria Penny retired from two careers, as a high-school physics teacher and as a scientific programmer. She earned a BA in physics from New York University and a PhD in science education from the University of Maryland.