Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce
A nonfiction history of blood that moves across medicine, war, and commerce. It shows how blood, both a therapeutic resource and a commodity, generated a global system of circulation and ethical conflict.
Work Information
Blood is both a symbol of life and a resource deeply tied to commerce and power.
The book follows blood from antiquity to the modern blood industry, tracing its transformation from mystical symbol to medical resource and then to a vast commercial network. It highlights not only scientific progress but also the tensions among infection, transfusion, and profit seeking.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Published
- 1998-09-22
- Pages
- 464 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 17.15 x 4.45 x 25.4 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780679418757
- ISBN-10
- 067941875X
- Category
- 洋書/Science/Medicine/Internal Medicine
Essence and emblem of life--feared, revered, mythologized, and used in magic and medicine from earliest times--human blood is now the center of a huge, secretive, and often dangerous worldwide commerce. It is a commerce whose impact upon humanity rivals that of any other business--millions of lives have been saved by blood and its various derivatives, and tens of thousands of lives have been lost. Douglas Starr tells how this came to be, in a sweeping history that ranges through the centuries. With the dawn of science, blood came to be seen as a component of human anatomy, capable of being isolated, studied, used. Starr describes the first documented transfusion: In the seventeenth century, one of Louis XIV's court physicians transfers the blood of a calf into a madman to "cure" him. At the turn of the twentieth century a young researcher in Vienna identifies the basic blood groups, taking the first step toward successful transfusion. Then a New York doctor finds a way to stop blood from clotting, thereby making all transfusion possible. In the 1930s, a Russian physician, in grisly improvisation, successfully uses cadaver blood to help living patients--and realizes that blood can be stored. The first blood bank is soon operating in Chicago. During World War II, researchers, driven by battlefield needs, break down blood into usable components that are more easily stored and transported. This "fractionation" process--accomplished by a Harvard team--produces a host of pharmaceuticals, setting the stage for the global marketplace to come. Plasma, precisely because it can be made into long-lasting drugs, is shipped and traded for profit; today it is a $5 billion business. The author recounts the tragic spread of AIDS through the distribution of contaminated blood products, and describes why and how related scandals have erupted around the world. Finally, he looks at the latest attempts to make artificial blood. Douglas Starr has written a groundbreaking book that tackles a subject of universal and urgent importance and explores the perils and promises that lie ahead.
Douglas Starr is an associate professor of journalism and codirector of the Graduate Program in Science Journalism at Boston University. A former newspaper reporter and field biologist, he has written on the environment, medicine, and science for a variety of publications, including Smithsonian , Audubon , and Sports Illustrated . He was science editor of "Bodywatch," a health series that ran for three years on PBS. Mr. Starr lives near Boston with his wife and their two sons.
Reviews
-
血液を軸に医療に関する諸問題を解き明かす。
医学の黎明期から遡って、医療・輸血・血液の歴史と社会との関わりを考えさせてくれる名著です。 特に、対象国を限定した作品ではないですが、日本についても、戦後の売血制度、ライシャワー大使襲撃事件、薬害エイズ、肝炎問題等が詳細に語られており、「よくここまで調べてあるな。」と感じ入りました。 「血液」を軸に、医療倫理と経済産業・社会構造について深い知識と洞察を与えてくれる本です。各国（イギリス・ドイツ・フランス・カナダ・スイス）の薬害エイズ問題について詳しく知りたい方にも最適な本です。
-
El autor escribe de una manera atrapante la historia del uso de la sangre en la medicina. Ofrece un trasfondo sólido para conocer cómo se ha utilizado a través del tiempo este fluido tan valioso. Lo recomiendo.
-
Great shape, brand new , packed well, no damage
-
un journaliste qui livre un travail d'investigation minutieuse et documentée à la manière des Hommes du Président. Un sujet très (trop !) rarement abordé que celui du lobby du sang. Je recommande vivement (dommage qu'il n'existe pas de version en français)
-
An entertaining account of blood from a cultural and medical perspective that's studded with individual stories and historical context. I found it extremely interesting, learning a great deal about the challenges faced by the medical profession when developing blood transfusion into a reliable, lifesaving process and beyond. The scope of this book is enormous but I particularly enjoyed the insight into how medicine moved from quackery to a scientific discipline. The book is not that easy to get hold of in the UK - I had to buy 2nd hand, however, I am glad I did and would happily recommend this excellent book to others. It is very readable and littered with facts that will make you more interesting to people with an interest in blood-facts.
-
This book was very informative and interesting but it seemed focused primarily on transfusions. While that is fascinating and it provides a nice overview of the development of this process, I wanted more. I was really invested in the early chapters where they talked about managing the physical aspects of transfusions (from better equipment to blood typing and the chemistry to store blood and keep it from clotting) and started to lose interest in the middle when it went on and on about plasma products. It picked up again at the end a bit more (and all that plasma product talk became more relevant) when it went into the spread of hepatitis and AIDS. What I would have liked to see was more about blood itself and not just its byproducts and use in transfusions, but information about how it became so widely used to test so many things in the body and when they started using these tests, how that fit in with the overall history we were being given. We're given a little info on testing related to AIDS and hepatitis but not to other diseases that can be determined by a blood test or other levels of things in the blood that can tell us about our health. Likewise we are told about the evolution of transfusion equipment but not about basic phlebotomy practices (switching from syringes to the evacuated tube system for example). I'd also like to read about the use of blood in forensics; how viable the samples they get are and how much they can learn from them. But the book focuses singularly on transfusions and blood products as if this is all we've ever done with blood, without even a passing mention to other branches of development.