The Human Body Hair sprouts through skin, baby teeth burst through gums, cells deep within the ear dance to rock 'n' roll, a brain cell fires electricity, red blood cells pulse through veins, an ovary ruptures and releases an egg and a fertilised egg splits and splits again on its way to embryonic life. It reveals the body in ways most people have never seen it before. We grow old because nature abandons us when we have fulfilled out evolutionary purpose of passing genes to our children. First to go in the body's decline, is a woman's fertility as her store of eggs runs out. Next, medical imagery shows how for most of us the skins starts to wrinkle, hearing and eyesight begin to fail, hair thins and falls out, and the spine gradually curves.
Bones deteriorate, and the incidence of heart disease and cancer rapidly increases.
The processes of death in the human body are remarkable. It is not usually a single event but a slow winding down process as the body's function shut off. It also looks at the constant process of cell formation and death which goes on throughout our lives - for instance, it is little known that our whole skeleton is replaced every seven years. The last program in the series explores the techniques used in making the programs. This episode explores the complexity of the human body - a miraculous and mysterious organism that humans inhabit, yet understand very little.