“im coming thru on my way home for xmas. wanna grab a beer?”

This summer, Rachael Wrobel hopes to grow a second skin. It will start from the skin cells contained in a biopsy, harvested by Stanford dermatologists. Carefully stewarded, those cells will divide and grow, laboratory-spun into fragile, new-skin sheets. The dermatologists will tinker with the skin’s fine machinery,…

A man waits in a dermatologist’s office, about to be rid of a beastly growth that’s been tormenting him for years. He sits, gowned, until the doctor—gloved, wielding an extractor and making incongruous small talk about take-out and the weather—starts in on his skin. She exerts increasing pressure on the stubborn…