Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood

An eye-opening exploration of blood, the life giving 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 breakthrough 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.

ISBN-13: 9781250230683

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Picador

Publication Date: 10-22-2019

Pages: 368

Product Dimensions: 5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

Rose George is the author of Nine Pints, The Big Necessity and Ninety Percent of Everything. A freelance journalist, she has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, and many other publications. She lives in Yorkshire.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

One: My Pint, 1
Two: That Most Singular and Valuable Reptile, 27
Three: Janet and Percy, 59
Four: Blood Borne, 99
Five: The Yellow Stuff, 133
Six: Rotting Pickles, 167
Seven: Nasty Cloths, 201
Eight: Code Red, 241
Nine: Blood Like Guinness: The ­Future, 263

Notes, 289
Further Reading, 332
Acknowledgments, 334
Index, 337