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BLOOD: AN EPIC HISTORY OF MEDICINE AND COMMERCE
Starr, Douglas
2000 1681 ABOUT THE BOOK Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce ANNOTATION "...a comprehensive history and analysis of blood banks, transfusions, and research...begins with the first documented transfusions in France to the latest efforts toward creating artificial blood." FROM THE PUBLISHER 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 forprofit; 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. SYNOPSIS Powerfully involving narrative and incisive detail, clarity and inherent drama: Blood offers in abundance the qualities that define the best popular science writing. Here is the sweeping story of a substance that has been feared, revered, mythologized, and used in magic and medicine from earliest times-a substance that has become the center of a huge, secretive, and often dangerous worldwide commerce. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Blood was described by judges as "a gripping page-turner, a significant contribution to the history of medicine and technology and a cautionary tale. Meticulously reported and exhaustively documented." FROM THE CRITICS Dallas Morning News Reads like a thriller. Starr is a wonderful storyteller as well as a sober historian. New Yorker This rewarding book, filled with sharp science, has everything from a brief survey of bloodletting to an account of the massive mobilization of donated blood for the Allied invasion of Normandy. But its real subject is the postwar rise of the 'blood-services complex,' which controls the global market for blood products. Scientific American Blood should be included in all first- and second-year medical curricula. Los Angeles Times A gripping page-turner, a significant contribution to the history of medicine and technology and a cautionary tale. Judges' citation Houston Chronicle [A] cast-of-thousands continent-spanning saga, complete with heroic physicians and dastardly entrepreneurs....Starr's history....inspires a more profound appreciation for a substance we sometimes take for granted. HarperCollins Publishers 0-688-17649-6 / 9780688176495
Soft Cover As New New York, New York, U.S.A.
Price:
15.75 USD
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