It always fascinated me from the time, and I was very much
concerned about origin of life. I try several times to co-relate things from
scrap.
According to Veda and Purana, Bramha, Vishnu and Shiva, also
known in the form of OM, were self-born and represent the commencement of the
universe. These three are supposed to function as God of creation, God of
protection and God of destruction. If something is created, no matter whether
it is living or non-living, it has some time, meaning it has life till it is
destroyed or dead. Its life depends on the quality of the matter it is made up
of.
Veda confirms that Human Body is made up of Panchatatwa, the
non-living matters, Water, Air, Heat, Earth and Sky. The modern science and the
law of physics also confirm that these are the basis of our life.
Scientific explanation by Aristotle in the 4th
century BC formulated that living cells develop from non-living matters. The
living cells utilize non-living biomolecules for their developmental stability.
It is not yet clear how these simple organic molecules could form a living
cell? The Evolution Theory of Panspermia explains that there were seeds of life
delivered to earth.
Miller-Urey in 1953 experimented and concluded that simple
organic molecules could be building blocks of
life. These biomolecules also control and regulate cellular functions.
They also noted that DNA and RNA bases could be formed through simulated
chemical reaction.
The unit structure of our body is a Cell. Human body
possesses more than 200 different types of cells and there are about 5 trillon
cells in our body. These are somatic or body building cells. These cells
contain entire human genome to build a human being.
In addition to them, man and woman possess special types of
cells, the gamet cells. In Men, it is the sperm cell and in Women, it is an egg
cell. In vivo, the life of sperm and egg cell is usually 1-2 days. But in
in-vitro conditions, only cryo-preservation in liquid nitrogen can stretch
their life to different duration. When these two precious cells are left to
unite either in vivo or in vitro conditions, another single celled structure is
formed called the zygote. From this zygote cell structure, Man and Woman will
be developed and born in this world as individuals with the life expectancy of
more than 100 years! Is not it interesting?
The zygote seems to have some tricks of programming the
developmental process and, may be, life expectancy too. How, when and what
level does it program life expectancy of an individual cell? The zygotes
undergo phases of cell cleavage and continuously divide into different cell
types when it becomes an embryo. During
differentiation process, in a fetal life, they form different organs and systems
of human body.
I have closely watched these cells during In-Vitro
Fertilization treatment process, their cleaving process in cultured
environment, the two-celled stage, four-celled stage, till blastocyst stage and
pre-embryo. They then start differentiating into several cell types. There are
specialized and responsible for the development of special organs, while the
unspecialized cells are popular as stem cells now-a-days as they can be used to
repair abnormal tissues of the body. These cells are extracted from a
pre-embryo, cultured after their nucleus is removed from another cell without
removing nucleus and allowed to fuse and grow. Thus, these fused growing cells
carry the property of nucleus carrying cell. This is now a cloned cell prepared
for particular purpose.
These days, not only cells and tissues, but a whole human can
be cloned like an identical twin but clones differ in age. After the advent of
cloning, it is clear that genetic material determines traits. Among all other
cells, the embryonic tissue seems best for tissue cloning. It is not easy, but
possible to clone any type of body cell or tissue. Its role is great in
different disease state like Alzheimer's, Genetic disorders, where there is
irreversible tissues damage. As such, the damaged tissue and be replaced by
cloned tissues, so that the organ can function well. This is therapeutic cloning. Modification and insertion of new
type of genes delays the disease process. In addition, cloned embryos are
supposed to produce smarter children. On the other hand, cloning technique has
some answers to the origin of life given in Purana. In those era, the devil,
Raktabiz was created by a drop of blood, and today fetal cord blood is used as
one of the sources of stem cells for cloning, which may further be useful to
create the whole human if not the similar Devil.
Overall these techniques have opened a new era in the line of
Tissue engineering and Medicine apart from different types of grafts of
different origin for replacement therapy. The successful application of
implants, organ transplant and separation of conjoint twins assures a lot to
develop in area.
On the other hand, there is also a great danger of such
knowledge being misused. Unethical insertion of genes apart from the
therapeutic purposes may even causes disasters.
There may be cross breeding of Human embryos with animal
cells and some day pure human being with 46 chromosomes may be rare to identify
. This part of science may develop newer creatures which may neither look like
a human nor like an animal. With this technology, it looks possible to have ten
headed Ravana, elephant-headed Ganesha and goat-headed Dakchhaprajapati around
us in the years to come.
Such knowledge of creation and development has led to much
confusion in this era. What is the eventual destiny of all these creatures? How
do they vanish? Do they really vanish?
What is death and when does a man die? Is it supposed to be the end of life?
There is also a great concern about death of an individual
which is death of a million celled human. Does a human die when heart stops
working, the ECG goes flat and there is no consciousness? It is just the death
of these functional units, but all the cells and organs have not died. What about
the organs transplantation (like eyes, kidney etc.)
after death? If these organs can be functional in another living individual how can we call it a dead? It is very important to note the death of different organs. Do we really know when all these organs die?
after death? If these organs can be functional in another living individual how can we call it a dead? It is very important to note the death of different organs. Do we really know when all these organs die?
It is well known fact that in human context, a clinical death
is declared after failure to regularize the functions of heart and lungs by all
resuscitation measures. When there is loss of consciousness with cessation of
all activities of the brain, brain death is declared and the individual is
biologically dead.
Brain death can be compared to the death of central
processing unit (CPU) of computer which loses the command to particular
activities of body. This causes loss of command to pump blood by the heart,
death of heart leads to loss of ventilation to lungs, death of lungs stops the
blood flow into blood vessels and eventually there will be loss of response to
all stimuli due to unavailability of nutrition.
Loss of blood circulation decreases the body temperature,
gradually down below 37 degree which stops cellular metabolism and production
of energy. When the source of free energy production in the body, necessary for
the living cell function is stopped, the cells turn harder, change in color
from pink to pallor to bluish to black.
If a young man's heart fails, transplantation of heart itself
or an artificial circulation system to other organs along with the application
of an artificial heart pump in place of
the heart may well revive the individual for quite some time though
there may not be total consciousness. We can also switch on a ventilator and
check all his survival possibilities. These are all trials to buy the time lag
which has something to do with revitalization. In Hindu ritual a dead body
should be cremated before it gets damaged. How long does the body take to be
damaged? None of the religious books properly define death in relation to
individual cell life.
In conclusion,
Ø
Every cell has definite life but who programs
its life is yet not clear.
Ø Human
life begins from zygote stage.
Ø
Human cell has definite life but who programs
its life is yet not clear.
Ø
All human body cells do not die when man dies.
Ø
There must be proper Scientific and religious
outlines to declare when a man really dies. Perhaps there is no Life of human
beings, rather, it is the lives of all cells in Toto, yet to be identified.
Dr.Uma Shrivastava
