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Citizenschallenge-v.3 replied to the topic Can Nature and God be the same thing? in the forum Humanism 5 years ago
Your physical me is mostly bacterial, did you know that?
W4U, at first when I heard that I was blown away, how can that be. It took, gladly not all to long, to realize germs are much smaller that human cells, so the whole thing seemed less outlandish.
Of course, often the most sensational first reports are the sexiest so get propagated the most, still after the first rush, turns out 90% may have been a little over the top.
Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body
Ron Sender, Shai Fuchs, and Ron Milohttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991899/
Reported values in the literature on the number of cells in the body differ by orders of magnitude and are very seldom supported by any measurements or calculations. Here, we integrate the most up-to-date information on the number of human and bacterial cells in the body. We estimate the total number of bacteria in the 70 kg “reference man” to be 3.8·1013. For human cells, we identify the dominant role of the hematopoietic lineage to the total count (≈90%) and revise past estimates to 3.0·1013 human cells. Our analysis also updates the widely-cited 10:1 ratio, showing that the number of bacteria in the body is actually of the same order as the number of human cells, and their total mass is about 0.2 kg.



