The Architecture of Sacrifice

In 2002, scientists Sydney Brenner, John Sulston, and H. Robert Horvitz won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering something remarkable inside every human body: programmed cell death, a process called apoptosis. From the moment you were formed in the womb, certain cells were genetically coded to die — not from disease or damage, but by design. When you were developing in the womb, the cells between your fingers received a chemical signal and quietly sacrificed themselves.…