Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce
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Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Written By: Douglas Starr
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 509
EAN: 9780688176495
ISBN: 0688176496
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: 2000-03-01
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: 2000-03-07
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editorial Reviews for Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce
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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."
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Consumer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Good book but makes many omissions
Comment: I borrowed this book from the library to help me with a lengthy article that I am writing on the history of blood banking. If I wasn't doing in-depth research, like combing through medical journals and scientific papers, I would have given this book 5 stars. However, Starr makes many omissions and skips vital facts, and I fail to understand why. For example, he credits Richard Lewisohn with discovering the use of sodium citrate, to keep blood from coagulating. However, nowhere does he mention that Lewisohn was not the first to use it in a successful transfusion. Two doctors published results right before he did, and another one gave a talk to the Nationl Acaademy of Sciences a month before Lewisohn published his results. Lewisohn is credited with finding the perfect formulation, and that is where credit is due. But Starr makes it seem that Lewisohn was the only one doing this research.He completely leaves out the work of Rous and Turner, who first used glucose to expand the life of red blood cells--a necessity in blood banking. He also completely omitted WW I--amazing! That's when the very first blood depot was set up and stored blood was used for the first time. I've found that he has embellished some personalities and downplayed others. He made it sound like no one was doing blood transfusions until Carrel's fateful night when he saved the baby, but in fact, they were being performed. Anyway, this is a good book and I am surprised to find these glaring flaws in it. I found it useful as a background for my research, but I don't understand why he chose to write it this way.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Cookies, juice and money
Comment: This book makes the history of medicine, especially blood, interesting, and accessible to anyone. It also exposes the blood industry, GOOD and BAD, with names and dates of the people who moved it along: the medics in World Wars who risked their lives, the brilliant and tempermental researchers, and the greedy. Starr gives you well-documented facts and lets the reader decide, as a good writer should, who is the bad guy. This book doesn't tug as much at your heartstrings as Bad Blood: Crisis in the American Red Cross by Judith Reitman, but that's by far an advantage. She would have you believe that just because people died (of AIDS, and Hepatitis), there must be someone in the blood industry at fault. There certainly is some fault to go around, but this book helps you decide who and why there is fault, and tells both sides of the story without leaving Reitman's huge empty gaps in the evidence.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Even human natural resources can be exploited
Comment: Intriguing compilation of facts about how the human natural resource called BLOOD can be exploited like any other. From the discovery of the different components of blood (in which he bravely sheds a different light on the popular urban legend of the death of African-American scientist Dr. Drew), to how greed and pride brought about the HIV tainted blood crisis, Starr weaves a very readable science tale.
Customer Rating:
Summary: epic yet concise
Comment: Although I defer to Mr.Haschka's expertise in the field of blood, I must take issue with his snippy comment about Mr.Starr's affinity for bad news. I found Blood to be well-balanced-- he labors mightily to present good news and noble accomplishments alongside the tales of negligence, ignorance, and good old-fashioned greed. Yes, he does report on the tainted blood in great depth but let's face it-- mistakes advance science as much as, or even more than, successes, and should be accorded the appropriate amount of space. As far as repetition is concerned, I admit that I haven't read Mr.Shilts' tome, but Blood is perfect for those of us who are interested in the HIV crisis in the larger context of the industry as a whole, and in light of earlier discoveries. The book lost me a bit in its lengthy discussion of the business complex, but the information is important in order to understand how the impact of new discoveries (and mistakes) are felt worldwide. The history of blood is nothing less than riveting, how mysticism and individual hubris has given way to science-- and how they have simultaneously coexisted and been at loggerheads ever since. A formidable subject, nicely covered in a single volume.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Non-fiction at its best.
Comment: From to animal-human blood transfusions to the mobilizations of donated blood for Normandy to the battle for blood-as-commodity, this riveting, epic history of medicine and commerce promises to keep you reading all day and night. You will gain a new respect for the Red Cross and for modern medicine, and you will most likely rush out to donate blood after cringing through the pages describing the problems in the Blood Services Complex. Incredibly well-researched, fascinating and enlightening.
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More Information on Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce
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Science journalist Douglas Starr's lively history of human blood as a valuable resource — he provocatively compares it to oil — courses with greed, altruism, and woozily ...
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Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce Douglas Starr Alfred A. Knopf US Trade hardcover ISBN 0-679-41875-X Publication Date: 12-1998
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Blood in its myriad of preparations has become a mainstay of modern medical practice. It is easy to forget that transfusion has been common medical practice only since 1915, when ...
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Lilo spent approximately seven hours at the blood service facility to fulfill her DUI sentence. Lohan left carrying a book titled Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce by ...
Sample text for Library of Congress control number 97046815
Sample text for Blood : an epic history of medicine and commerce / Douglas Starr.
NEJM -- Blood: An epic history of medicine and commerce
Book Review from The New England Journal of Medicine -- Blood: An epic history of medicine and commerce
Red Gold . About the Series . Filmmakers & Author | PBS
Based on Douglas Starr's critically acclaimed book BLOOD: AN EPIC HISTORY OF MEDICINE AND COMMERCE, the four-part series addresses the ways in which we have understood and ...