"It is hard to gross out Mary Roach, but not impossible. The science writer's books have explored uncomfortable topics ranging from the afterlife of cadavers to the physiology of sex to the "alimentary canal" running from your mouth to your anus. She once visited a "body farm" in Tennessee where corpses are left to decompose to provide a time standard to determine time of death in murder and other cases."
""That was tough because it was visual and also olfactory, and at one point the researcher said, 'If you put your ear really close, you can hear the maggots feeding,'" said Roach in a recent talk at Harvard's Science Center. That maggot fest didn't do it, though, in part because Roach said her fascination with her topics often outweighs her disgust or horror."
"It was a rare instance of Roach leaving things to the audience's imagination, something her books - including her latest, "Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy," published in September - don't tend to do. Roach spoke to a packed lecture hall, responding to questions from fellow science writer Elizabeth Preston and members of the audience. Roach proved as engaging and taboo-breaking in person as she is on the page."
Mary Roach pursues unsettling human-anatomy topics with strong curiosity that often overrides disgust. Her work has covered cadavers, sexual physiology, and the alimentary canal from mouth to anus. She visited a Tennessee body farm where corpses decompose to establish time-of-death standards for murder investigations. A researcher’s observation about hearing maggots feeding combined visual and olfactory extremes, yet fascination prevailed. A local medical examiner later managed to gross her out with an unspecified case. Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy appeared in September. Roach begins with broad topics and follows leads by instinct, contacting researchers directly.
Read at Harvard Gazette
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