Book Review: Blood Work--Which turns into my views on Stem Cell Research
I don't usually review non-fiction. I like weird non-fiction, and that's fine. But I don't think a lot of you will want to read them or really care what I thought about a book about finding the 1918 flu virus, or the ethical questions of HeLa cells, or a treatise on the history of purging in the Wild West. But this one, I have some discussions afterwards that I want to write about. And remember, after all, it is my blog.
My mother got me this book for Christmas. I started reading it, and then it just fell by the wayside, mostly during my studying for my Medical Lab Scientist Registry exam. But now it's finished.
As some of you may know, blood transfusion came into common practice in the early twentieth century on the tail of Landsteiner's discovery of blood groups. What a lot of people don't know is that it is had been attempted far before that. In the 1600s. In the Scientific Revolution, many English scientists attempted transfusions, and some of them were successful even. It was all kind of a crap shoot, because they didn't know about immunology and antibodies and what have you, but they were investigating the idea. Eventually, the French, not wanting to be left behind by the English (who were dominant in anatomy, physiology and medicine at the time), started to attempt the transfusions as well. There was some push-back in England, but it wasn't anything compared to the panic and hysteria that the idea caused in France. The French saw it as a Protestant idea, and a freakish area of science that shouldn't be trifled with. If you used human blood, you could spread faults, weaknesses and sins from person to person. If you used animal blood, it could be even worse--you could create hybrids of humans and animals. When scientist Denis' subject, Antoine Mauroy, died after transfusions, Denis was charged with murder. But it's possible there was more intrigue than someone dying from an incompatible transfusion.
The book is a fascinating and fast-paced summary of the world of the Renaissance, blood transfusion, and the odd mix of curiosity and superstition that was the Scientific Revolution. And as someone trained and certified in blood-banking, I went back and forth between cringing at the risky abandon with which they practiced direct transfusions repeatedly from sheep to humans and random dog to other random dog, to feeling the warmth of knowing that Denis saved a sixteen-year-old boy's life through transfusion. A sixteen-year-old boy who was nearly bled to death by physician bleeding was the first human to be transfused. We don't know his name or what he did with the rest of his life. But Denis saved his life, almost on a hunch. And he was the beginning of lives upon lives to be saved. And as a Mormon scientist who believes that all science comes from God, and all scientific research is directed through the inspiration of God, reading about that incident was a spiritual experience.
Anyways, the epilogue is what I want to talk about. Holly Tucker, the author, draws a comparison between the fears that transfusion would create hideous hybrid creatures and the fact blood transfusion was delayed more than two centuries by uninformed superstition and the fact that some people are afraid of stem cell research for the same reason.
A couple places where I have to differ from Holly Tucker's view: Stem cell research has never been restricted by the US government. NEVER. It has merely been not-funded by tax-derived funds. Because there's a separate ethical problem with having someone, even indirectly, fund research that they find to be an abomination. I don't find stem cell research to be an abomination. I believe in it. I am also a registered PSC (peripheral stem cell) donor. But I do see the problem with using stem cells from aborted babies. That's the only thing I have a problem with. I can foresee a horrifying world in which women would conceive babies and abort them to sell the stem cells. And yes, I acknowledge that this is the same fear that French doctor in the book, Martiniere, had about people being killed to sell their blood for transfusion. But he saw the body market in Egypt, and knew that people were being murdered in alleyways to be mummified to be sold as mummy powder (which was something of a cure-all at the time, which is revolting in of itself). That's where the fear came from. Organs are on the black market. There are bad people in this world.
I also have to just say that stem cells are a great place for research, but they don't hold the answer to life and the universe, as some people believe. I was teaching a Boy Scouts Medicine Merit Badge Clinic when one of the eleven year old boys told me that the cure to cancer is stem cells, and that if the government would just let us use stem cells, there would be no cancer. First of all, we don't know what will cure cancer. But we have a lot of ideas. And some of them have to do with repairing cells. And some of them are chemical. And we are actually pretty successful at treating cancer today. Not all cancers, but a lot of cancers have really great survival rates today. Also, we do use stem cells to treat cancer. That's where my peripheral stem cells would go if I were ever a match for someone. It's better than a bone marrow transplant for most leukemias. Stem cells just know where to go for some reason. So you just inject someone with good stem cells, and they know what to do and where to go. They're pretty cool. But they aren't the end of everything. And even if the government funded stem cell research, we are probably several hundred years away from growing limbs. Just saying.
But she does bring up some really great points. Are we delaying something as game-changing as blood transfusion by panic? And then she brings up some other good points. If we're afraid of hybrids, we've got problems. We already have knock-out mice that have human cells. We already have humsters--hamster ovaries fertilized by human sperm that are created when we're testing sperm viability. But the big questions start when we begin to ask ourselves, "Where does the human stop and the animal start? When does something animal become human enough to obtain human rights? When does something human become so animal that it only has animal rights?"
And no, I don't think that, even if transfusion research had continued in the scientific revolution, we would have gotten anywhere close to actually using safe transfusion until mid 1800s at the earliest, because we needed to learn a lot about immunology first. And in some ways, maybe it was good that that avenue was blocked off. It made researchers really ask themselves, "Why didn't it always work then?" when maybe it would have just been accepted with a 50-50 chance of the person dying post-transfusion and never really made safe. Because the research was ended, modern researchers started at square-one with it, and were able to apply modern knowledge to it, rather than building on top of a faulty foundation. But we have to ask ourselves if we're so panic-ridden that we're delaying life-saving.
I don't understand people's fear of stem cell research really, as long as they're using non-fetal stem cells. I also don't understand people's fear of GMOs. It's the same idea. But this book was really thought-provoking. I would recommend it. So long as you have the stomach for 1600s dissection, vivisection and blood transfusions (which were not clean affairs).
Five stars for the book.
My mother got me this book for Christmas. I started reading it, and then it just fell by the wayside, mostly during my studying for my Medical Lab Scientist Registry exam. But now it's finished.
As some of you may know, blood transfusion came into common practice in the early twentieth century on the tail of Landsteiner's discovery of blood groups. What a lot of people don't know is that it is had been attempted far before that. In the 1600s. In the Scientific Revolution, many English scientists attempted transfusions, and some of them were successful even. It was all kind of a crap shoot, because they didn't know about immunology and antibodies and what have you, but they were investigating the idea. Eventually, the French, not wanting to be left behind by the English (who were dominant in anatomy, physiology and medicine at the time), started to attempt the transfusions as well. There was some push-back in England, but it wasn't anything compared to the panic and hysteria that the idea caused in France. The French saw it as a Protestant idea, and a freakish area of science that shouldn't be trifled with. If you used human blood, you could spread faults, weaknesses and sins from person to person. If you used animal blood, it could be even worse--you could create hybrids of humans and animals. When scientist Denis' subject, Antoine Mauroy, died after transfusions, Denis was charged with murder. But it's possible there was more intrigue than someone dying from an incompatible transfusion.
The book is a fascinating and fast-paced summary of the world of the Renaissance, blood transfusion, and the odd mix of curiosity and superstition that was the Scientific Revolution. And as someone trained and certified in blood-banking, I went back and forth between cringing at the risky abandon with which they practiced direct transfusions repeatedly from sheep to humans and random dog to other random dog, to feeling the warmth of knowing that Denis saved a sixteen-year-old boy's life through transfusion. A sixteen-year-old boy who was nearly bled to death by physician bleeding was the first human to be transfused. We don't know his name or what he did with the rest of his life. But Denis saved his life, almost on a hunch. And he was the beginning of lives upon lives to be saved. And as a Mormon scientist who believes that all science comes from God, and all scientific research is directed through the inspiration of God, reading about that incident was a spiritual experience.
Anyways, the epilogue is what I want to talk about. Holly Tucker, the author, draws a comparison between the fears that transfusion would create hideous hybrid creatures and the fact blood transfusion was delayed more than two centuries by uninformed superstition and the fact that some people are afraid of stem cell research for the same reason.
A couple places where I have to differ from Holly Tucker's view: Stem cell research has never been restricted by the US government. NEVER. It has merely been not-funded by tax-derived funds. Because there's a separate ethical problem with having someone, even indirectly, fund research that they find to be an abomination. I don't find stem cell research to be an abomination. I believe in it. I am also a registered PSC (peripheral stem cell) donor. But I do see the problem with using stem cells from aborted babies. That's the only thing I have a problem with. I can foresee a horrifying world in which women would conceive babies and abort them to sell the stem cells. And yes, I acknowledge that this is the same fear that French doctor in the book, Martiniere, had about people being killed to sell their blood for transfusion. But he saw the body market in Egypt, and knew that people were being murdered in alleyways to be mummified to be sold as mummy powder (which was something of a cure-all at the time, which is revolting in of itself). That's where the fear came from. Organs are on the black market. There are bad people in this world.
I also have to just say that stem cells are a great place for research, but they don't hold the answer to life and the universe, as some people believe. I was teaching a Boy Scouts Medicine Merit Badge Clinic when one of the eleven year old boys told me that the cure to cancer is stem cells, and that if the government would just let us use stem cells, there would be no cancer. First of all, we don't know what will cure cancer. But we have a lot of ideas. And some of them have to do with repairing cells. And some of them are chemical. And we are actually pretty successful at treating cancer today. Not all cancers, but a lot of cancers have really great survival rates today. Also, we do use stem cells to treat cancer. That's where my peripheral stem cells would go if I were ever a match for someone. It's better than a bone marrow transplant for most leukemias. Stem cells just know where to go for some reason. So you just inject someone with good stem cells, and they know what to do and where to go. They're pretty cool. But they aren't the end of everything. And even if the government funded stem cell research, we are probably several hundred years away from growing limbs. Just saying.
But she does bring up some really great points. Are we delaying something as game-changing as blood transfusion by panic? And then she brings up some other good points. If we're afraid of hybrids, we've got problems. We already have knock-out mice that have human cells. We already have humsters--hamster ovaries fertilized by human sperm that are created when we're testing sperm viability. But the big questions start when we begin to ask ourselves, "Where does the human stop and the animal start? When does something animal become human enough to obtain human rights? When does something human become so animal that it only has animal rights?"
And no, I don't think that, even if transfusion research had continued in the scientific revolution, we would have gotten anywhere close to actually using safe transfusion until mid 1800s at the earliest, because we needed to learn a lot about immunology first. And in some ways, maybe it was good that that avenue was blocked off. It made researchers really ask themselves, "Why didn't it always work then?" when maybe it would have just been accepted with a 50-50 chance of the person dying post-transfusion and never really made safe. Because the research was ended, modern researchers started at square-one with it, and were able to apply modern knowledge to it, rather than building on top of a faulty foundation. But we have to ask ourselves if we're so panic-ridden that we're delaying life-saving.
I don't understand people's fear of stem cell research really, as long as they're using non-fetal stem cells. I also don't understand people's fear of GMOs. It's the same idea. But this book was really thought-provoking. I would recommend it. So long as you have the stomach for 1600s dissection, vivisection and blood transfusions (which were not clean affairs).
Five stars for the book.
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