A Six-Million Dollar Man When biochemist Harold J. Morowitz of Yale University received a humorous birthday card from his daughter that read: “According to biochemists, the materials that make up the human body are worth only ninety-eight cents,” he reached for a catalog of a supply company and began looking up prices. It turns out the human body is actually A Six Million Dollar Man. Hemoglobin is $285 a gram; insulin, $47.50 a gram; purified trypsin (an enzyme), $36; bilirubin, the bile pigment, $12; human DNA, $76; collagen, $15; human albumin, $3. Some less common constituents: Acetate kinase, a substance that activates an enzyme, $8,860 a gram; alkaline phosphatase, $225; hyaluronic acid, the cement substance of the hyaluronic acid, the cement substance of the tissues, $175; bradykinin (amino acids), $12,000. A real shocker came when he got to follicle-stimulating hormone—$8 million a gram—a gift he suggests for people who have everything. For the really wealthy, there is proclactin, the hormone that stimulates milk production in the breast glands—$17.5 million a gram. Calculating the percentage of each chemical in the composition of the human body, Morowitz arrived at $245.54 as the average value per gram of human being. He then weighed himself: 168 pounds or 79,364 grams. Since man is 68 percent water, his dry weight was 24,436 grams. Multiplying that by $245.54 came to $6,000,015.44. “It was an enormous upgrade to my ego after the 98-cent evaluation,” Morowitz wrote in the journal Hospital Practice . - Tan, P. L. (1996, c1979). Encyclopedia of 7700 illustrations : A treasury of illustrations, anecdotes, facts and quotations for pastors, teachers and Christian workers . Garland TX: Bible Communications.