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Summary
Summary
An eye-opening exploration of blood, the lifegiving substance with the power of taboo, the value of diamonds and the promise of breakthrough science
Blood carries life, yet the sight of it makes people faint. It is a waste product and a commodity pricier than oil. It can save lives and transmit deadly infections. Each one of us has roughly nine pints of it, yet many don't even know their own blood type. And for all its ubiquitousness, the few tablespoons of blood discharged by 800 million women are still regarded as taboo: menstruation is perhaps the single most demonized biological event.
Rose George, author of The Big Necessity , is renowned for her intrepid work on topics that are invisible but vitally important. In Nine Pints , she takes us from ancient practices of bloodletting to the breakthough of the "liquid biopsy," which promises to diagnose cancer and other diseases with a simple blood test. She introduces Janet Vaughan, who set up the world's first system of mass blood donation during the Blitz, and Arunachalam Muruganantham, known as "Menstrual Man" for his work on sanitary pads for developing countries. She probes the lucrative business of plasma transfusions, in which the US is known as the "OPEC of plasma." And she looks to the future, as researchers seek to bring synthetic blood to a hospital near you.
Spanning science and politics, stories and global epidemics, Nine Pints reveals our life's blood in an entirely new light.
Nine Pints was named one of Bill Gates recommended summer reading titles for 2019.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist George (Ninety Percent of Everything) offers an insightful, fast-paced account of the science, politics, and social history of blood. By visiting places that include a donation center in India and a leech farm in Wales (which, after a 2007 terrorist attack in London, supplied hospitals with leeches used in reconstructive surgery), she explores the fragility of the international blood supply. She writes poignantly about blood-borne viruses, such as Ebola, HIV, and Zika, and about the difficulty of ensuring that donated blood is safe, as underscored by tainted blood scandals in the U.S. and U.K. in the 1970s and in Canada as recently as 2013. Taboos associated with blood are vividly reported in Nepal, where George interviews young women banned from their homes and forced to sleep in sheds while menstruating, and in India, where she tells the intriguing story of engineer and entrepreneur Arunachalam Muruganantham, whose development and successful marketing of a "low-cost mini sanitary napkin manufacturing machine" began with his wearing a goat-blood-filled fake uterus made from a football. Noting that "every three seconds, somewhere in the world, a person receives a stranger's blood," this wide-reaching, lively survey makes clear that blood has become a "commodity that is dearer than oil." (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Engrossing secrets of the sanguine.British journalist George (Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry that Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate, 2013, etc.) astutely probes the historical uses, misconceptions, taboos, and personal and professional value of human blood, "a medicine, a lifesaver, and a commodity that is dearer than oil." In a text that is both fascinating and informative, the author explores blood-borne disorders, medical uses, benefits, detriments, and wonders. An intriguing tour of the largest European blood donation facility reveals the cooled, pressurized environment that keeps stored plasma dust and insect-freethough not unbiased, since England's National Health Service enacted its "male donor preference" in 2003 after the rejection of female blood donations due to their hormone-heavy chemistry. George also profiles the thriving volunteer fleet of "blood bikers" delivering blood (and other essential bodily fluids) to health care centers around the clock. She writes that the worldwide shortage of this precious resource is as real as medical science's inability to comprehend and successfully replicate it, although the research supporting synthetic blood sounds promising. The author also highlights the importance of exsanguination via hermaphroditic leeches and the pioneering legacy of hematological researcher Janet Vaughan. Particularly gripping are chapters featuring interviews with HIV-positive South African youth and sections thoughtfully detailing the evolution and "intent and cunning" resilience of the HIV virus, which virologists describe with awe and dread simultaneously. George vividly presents sections on the demonization of menstruation and the anomaly of "fake menstruating men" alongside notes on "blood rejuvenation" and a clever interview with India's "Menstrual Man," who risked his marriage and reputation to radically revolutionize the sanitary pad industry in his native land and beyond. The author packs her book with the kinds of provocative, witty, and rigorously reported facts and stories sure to make readers view the integral fluid coursing through our veins in a whole new way.An intensive, humanistic examination of blood in all its dazzling forms and functions. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Blood is feared and revered, and it is continually dying and renewing. Its power is mystical, emotional, and biological. Blood infuses our language: bloodthirsty, blood-chilling, blood brothers. George (Ninety Percent of Everything, 2013) delivers an informative, elegant, and provocative exploration of the life-giving substance she describes as ""stardust and the sea"" for its iron content derived from the demise of supernovas and its water and salt from the oceans of our origin. In the stellar opening chapter, she fuses her personal experience donating blood with remarkable hematologic facts. Approximately five liters of the fluid (depending on your sex and size), containing 30 trillion red-blood cells, clotting factors, platelets, plasma, and cryoprecipitate, travel 12,000 miles throughout your body daily at a speed of 2 to 3 miles per hour. Other chapters consider medicinal leeches (bloodsuckers that secrete their own anticoagulant and anesthetic compounds), hemorrhage, HIV, the history of blood transfusion and blood banks, menstruation, the feminine-hygiene industry (a typical woman in an industrialized nation uses an estimated 11,000-16,000 sanitary products during her lifetime), and future possibilities of synthetic blood. George also writes about plasma, possible contamination of the supply, and profit, noting that blood is the thirteenth most traded product globally. George's wondrously well-written work makes for bloody good reading!--Tony Miksanek Copyright 2018 Booklist
Choice Review
George, a journalist, has written an engaging, approachable text which focuses on the role and usage of human blood and its components as medical therapy and as a commodity. In nine narrative chapters that use blood as a unifying theme, Rose offers insights on a variety of topics, from the economic and health disparities surrounding access to safe menstrual products, to the history of bloodletting, to the vital importance of blood donations. A wealth of basic scientific information, world history, social science, and economic theory is contained in this slim volume. While the text is written for the lay reader, copious notes and references make it appropriate for a scholarly audience as well. Readers can sample individual self-contained chapters for research support or read the work cover to cover to illuminate their understanding of this life-sustaining fluid. This thought-provoking volume would complement general, social science, and health sciences collections. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Nadia J. Lalla, independent scholar
Library Journal Review
Be prepared to get angry. Not at this book or author George (The Big Necessity), who does an excellent job with the topic, but with the economic and social injustices surrounding blood; injustices that have a particularly high impact on women. Chapters on AIDS in South Africa and how it disproportionately affects young girls and menstruation taboos in Nepal are discouraging, but what is truly rage inducing is the evidence of how little research time and money goes to "women's issues" such as menstruation and PMS, especially in comparison to funds spent on erectile dysfunction. Other chapters focus on comparatively mild -topics -including blood donation and leeches. There are some disheartening statistics about how poor people are often exploited for their blood and how big pharma profits from freely given (or paid) donations. Regrettably, there is no call to action, though it does end on a hopeful note. VERDICT Recommended for nonexperts curious about their own bodies and blood as commodity in the world economy.-Cate Schneiderman, Emerson Coll., Boston © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| 1 My Pint | p. 1 |
| 2 That Most Singular and Valuable Reptile | p. 27 |
| 3 Janet and Percy | p. 59 |
| 4 Blood Borne | p. 99 |
| 5 The Yellow Stuff | p. 133 |
| 6 Rotting Pickles | p. 167 |
| 7 Nasty Cloths | p. 201 |
| 8 Code Red | p. 241 |
| 9 Blood Like Guinness: The Future | p. 263 |
| Notes | p. 289 |
| Further Reading | p. 332 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 334 |
| Index | p. 337 |