it’s not the parts that’s costly, it’s the labor. ::cue highhat::
All of the “A human body costs only X dollars!” cites are completely worthless.
Sure, you can run a cost for the base elements.
But the organic compounds in a human, hell, in every living being are incredibly complicated despite being composed of only a small set of elements.
It’s a bit like saying - "Pssssht! It only costs me ten cents to buy and use (to any extent) a letter of the alphabet! Therefore, forget Shakespeare! Hamlet, which uses at most (and no more than) 26 letters shouldn’t have a value more than $2.60!
It’s all in the combinations and reactions, people. If humans were really that cheap, we’d have synthesized them (us?) by now. It ain’t gonna happen in our lifetime. Hell, I doubt it will happen in the entire human arc.
Other trace elements needed are chromium (Cr[sup]3+[/sup]) and manganese.
I once looked into this subject and made a list, but can’t find it right now. It’s probably on my old computer. Anyway, I mainly just went through Wikipedia’s pages on the individual elements, and looked for sections labeled “Biological role”. Some elements, such as bromine, have no known role in mammals but other animals or plants use them.
Actually, most cheeses are made with microbial rennet these days.
Of course, ((Superfluous)) listed prices for salts of calcium, phosphorus, and potassium, and a compound for nitrogen, as well. It’s probably not out of the question that the pure elements would be worth more there, too (certainly for the salts, where it would cost energy to separate them).
If you pick any element on webelements, then choose “biology” on the right hand bar, the page contains an interactive flash based display of the whole periodic table, allowing you to represent the abundances in the human body in various ways, and mouse over the individual elements to see the information (about halfway down the page):
They do a similar thing for geologic abundances. Webelements is a really good resource.