Following on from the enormously successful BBC program, The Human Body, Superhuman explores the body’s amazing ability to heal, renew, and regenerate itself. This illustrated book relates dramatic tales of futuristic medicine taking place today, and, also, describes how the body’s own power of self-repair is enhanced with contemporary drugs and techniques. It also looks ahead to what will be possible in the near future — ‘designer’ babies, viruses carrying repair genes to cells before they become cancerous, tailor-made human tissue and organs from modifying animal organs with human genes, and electrodes implanted into the brain allowing the blind to see.

Superhuman concentrates on six key medical areas — cancer, infection, transplantation, trauma, repair, and reproduction. It records the before, during, and after of radical operations on real people. It gives witness to the hopes and fears of doctors and patients as new treatments are administered — in many cases, for the first time for both the patients and the professionals. None of these developments would be possible without an increasing understanding of the basic way our body functions, or without a clear recognition of medicine’s history. Superhuman focuses on these aspects of medicine and, also, on the key ethical problems raised by the advance of medical technology.

DK Publishing (2001)

ISBN 978-0789468277