I would pay serious money for a system that could tag and trace either a) organic molecules of my body as they get reused, or b) inorganic molecules that have passed through my body. In the end, I suppose both would undoubtedly simply resemble specific path examples of the carbon and precipitation cycles. Yet...
Yesterday, one mosquito mother-to-be (or five, or ten) was able to live 'til the next time she must risk her life to feed, thanks to the generous blood-meal I presented, unaware at the time. My DNA-less erythrocytes have since been broken down to release hemoglobins, of which two α-subunits, two β-subunits, and one iron atom were systematically disassembled and further disintegrated until individual amino acids were reached. Glucose and other nutrients submerged in my blood could have been reused as energy-source straight away. But my digested proteins, in amino acid form, will be rebuilt into essential functioning tissues for either mother mosquito or her progeny. They will continue to be reused, past mosquito and human lifetime, a step down the food chain and perhaps a bit more worn each time, until finally bacteria or plant life recycles them brand spanking-shiny new. And cycles them back to feed the consumers.
Catabolism, anabolism. On Energizer-bunny repeat.
It would be wrong to label them as "my" proteins or "my" amino acids. Aside from the original zygote that came to my possession as my future vessel of existence, which I generously received from mostly mom and a little (but very much essential bit) of dad (who got them from their parents, in turn, anyway), everything else I own have come from similarly recycled building blocks unceremoniously inherited from third innocent parties of the food chain. For some reason, however, a group of highly developed ganglia (though I should not call them that, per emergent property of large numbers) has developed this inconvenient sense of identity that follows the tendency to label things with "I" and "mine." For most of my (evolutionarily advantageous) body parts, they guard with an intricate system of surveillance. But for peripheral, non-essential expendables like overgrown keratin and flaking epithelium, they are free to let go with no more sense of loss than urine or feces that have traveled and exhausted their purpose through my inner tube. Even though they are just as much "me" as any other portion scrutinized by my nervous system, no tears are shed, no thought dedicated to, no spiritual identity is attached to their inconspicuous elimination. All spring forth from my endless (while I live) supply of marrow stem cells, yet all are far from raised equal.
Why does this enormous congregation of cells work as one? (How many laws against universe and entropy do we break by merely breathing?) Why does no single cell hold its own conscious identity? In our totalitarian body state, the nervous system, holder of identity, sits as our stoic Big Brother with not one hint of dissent from any cell confined in the name of survival and existence. Are autoimmune diseases the result of the body's proletariat crying Viva la Resistancia? Big Brother tells us to label those as 'illnesses' that must be cured. We go to fellow Big-Brother-run doctors to administer steroids to bribe those overactive guerrilla warriors of the immune system.
Death is the eventual victory against the dictatorship, where anarchy reigns and the bourgeoisie are lysed, freed to cycle the universe.
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