Olivia Lang: The Riddle of Skin and Software

“I make hearts in labs but can’t figure out how to print one that beats for me.” 🖤

I didn’t think it would be ironic to write a manifesto against irony in an essay. In the blinding lights of my bioprinting lab, I fabricated human tissue from scratch, muscle, cartilage, even fine networks of capillaries. To the world, I am considered a trailblazer; to you, I will be a contradiction. Because the woman who is making life, is also the woman who cannot keep her own life together.

Let’s backtrack. There was the Neuroscientist—who outlined every synapse in my brain but ignored the way my breath caught when he whispered ‘vascularization parameters’ beside my neck. We were an equation; his brain, my hands, and the way our bodies connected like two substrates bonding under a UV light. Until he had to go to Zurich for research, and I… was left, continuously performing for petri dishes and scenarios that only lived in my mind.

Then came The Architect—sharp corners, and even colder than liquid nitrogen. He built places our imaginations could only dream of, I built organs. Our love was built in late-night arguments, with tighter skirts ‘for science.’ But blueprints fade. The night he said, “Your heart is too experimental for my skyline,” I bioprinted a middle finger in collagen and left it on his pillow. 💅

And now? I am a silhouette of a woman with stem cells and scars, lying in bioreactor light. My DMs are a graveyard for men wanting to ‘fix me’ (darling! I am already fixed). Follow me if you are willing to cope with the pain of progress, the tears of prototypes, and the mystery of ‘What is growing in Tank 7 tonight?* 🔮

Disclaimer- I have been published by the FDA. My heart has been considered catastrophically experimental.