Nine Pints

A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood

By: Rose George

Narrated by: Karen Cass

Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

An eye-opening exploration of blood, the lifegiving 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 modern “hemovigilance” teams that track blood-borne diseases. 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.

©2018 Rose George (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Very well done

Very informative and thought provoking with tons of research put into all aspects of blood.

Excellent read!

cultural-exploration, historical-figures, historical-places-events, historical-research, medical, war-is-hell
Sept 7, 2018
I have been an RN since forever and have worked in an assortment of acute, rehab, and chronic care settings, so my views are not unbiased nor uninformed. Perhaps if I give one example from each chapter it might be useful to those who speak medicalese and those who don't.
1. The changing understanding of blood though millennia including the relatively recent divisions of typing, and the development of blood storage and accessibility.
2. The medical use of leeches from antiquity to the present well past the time of blades or scarification such as brought about the demise of former President Washington.
3. The incredible contributions of Dame Janet Maria Vaughan of the women's college at Oxford in the mid twentieth century.
4. The greatest cause of HIV/AIDS around the world is donating blood in Africa and Southeast Asia.
5. The treatment perils for hemophilia. I value the people mentioned, but am very unhappy that Arthur Ashe went unmentioned even though he came from the country whose pharmaceutical companies denied culpability in the deaths of so many unique people.
6. The practices of derision and blame placed upon women in many countries which also have almost no clean water or sanitary facilities simply because the women are having menstrual bleeding.
7. Beginning with the man who endured verbal abuse from nearly everyone while researching the manufacture and distribution of affordable sanitary napkins and tampons in India and developing nations where women could not afford them and were forced to use some methods from antiquity.
8. Trauma Medicine in civilian hospitals and in war areas and the changes in the use of blood and blood products.
9. The history of vampirism and the search for synthetic products as well as blood as a fountain of youth.
There is an extensive bibliography following these chapters.
I found it to be well written, educational, and enjoyable.
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Metropolitan Books courtesy of NetGalley. Thank you!
6-11-2019
I was delighted to find this on the Daily Deal!

Curiosity becomes Informative

I really like this book. There are many attributes of blood that are not here, but as she follows a few biggies like transfusion and blood donation I learned a lot about blood in general. The narrator was excellent. My only criticism is she spends way too long on the really important issue of menstrual pads.

A compelling history of humans and blood

Well narrated, the speaker keeps you engaged at all times with a nice English accent, easy to understand and fun.
I loved the well detailed, animated, -never boring- history of our relationship with this lifegiving fluid . from vampires as well as many other fascinating myths still held today around the world, this well researched book also takes you to detailed info of scientists through the years who have increased our knowledge, from blood letting to blood typing, women's issues, societal fears and on, this has been lively, sometimes humorous, and always fascinating. the author follows a chronological order, inserting fascinating tidbits of trivia and information along the way. compelling! I highly recommend this for men and women, as well as curious older children, who will gain a unique insight about views around the world, myth and fact, regarding our amazing blood in an entertaining, humorous and quite refreshingly straightforward read.

AMAZING

Wonderfully engaging audiobook as well as an eye-opening read that more should know about. Couldn’t stop listening!

There will be blood

For anyone wanting to learn about the blood running through our veins, from its history to future breakthroughs.

Compelling and shocking.

Rose George goes all the way for this book. The amount of knowledge you gain about the world (and blood) through this story is astounding!

Collection of loosely related stories on blood

After reading this book, I have to say I had very mixed feelings and it is a bit hard to determine if I liked it as a whole or not. So here is what I liked in this book:
- It draws attention to very important problems and facts related to blood. For instance, I never realized that selling and processing blood is a multi-billion growing market.
- It has some interesting stories.
- (Audio) version is almost perfect, the narration is very clear, with charming British female voice.
Here is what I disliked:
- This book does not have a point. It is a collection of loosely related chapters about things around blood: transfusion, leeches, HIV in Africa, and so on.
- I was expecting this book is going to be "medical knowledge about blood, simply explained". But instead, it is a lot of not-so-useful history trivia
- It is a bit too heavy on female menstrual hygiene, and the history of it - 2 out of 9 chapters are about this. While I do recognize that it is an important topic, it was really hard for me to finish those two chapters.

All things considered, for me it was a good read, but I would not call it a "must read".

insightful

not what i initailly expected... so much more. eye-opening view of the world thru blood. it really is the thing that ties us together, tears us apart, and something we absolutely can't live without. I loved the variety of topics from AIDS epidemic in South Africa to the evolution of treatment of life-threatening bleeding events.

Great book, but it does need a different lector!

An excellent popular science book full of anecdotes and surprising twists.
What could use an improvement is the lector reading it and editing.
The male quotes read by the lector sound silly and patronizing; simply hideous. A hard listen at times.

Then there is the editing - more than once have I had the impression that a sentence was not finished by the lector yet, but simply cut and another reading session was glued. You hear it!

So: book 5 stars, audiobook 2.5 stars.