Olivia: A barrel of crude oil today is worth about eighty dollars. A barrel of human blood, once it’s separated into all its valuable components? Over sixty-seven thousand dollars. Jackson: Whoa, hold on. Sixty-seven thousand? That can't be right. Olivia: It is. Blood is the thirteenth most traded commodity in the world, more valuable than oil. And today, we’re finding out why. That staggering fact comes from Rose George's incredible book, Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood. Jackson: And Rose George is the perfect guide for this. She's an investigative journalist who dives into these huge, overlooked topics—like sanitation or global shipping. Apparently, her own experiences with endometriosis, a condition involving blood, partly inspired this deep dive. Olivia: Exactly. She takes us from her own blood donation in the UK on a journey across the globe, uncovering stories that are equal parts inspiring and horrifying. And that incredible monetary value we just talked about? For most of human history, blood's value was purely mystical, a substance of life and death.

Jackson: That makes sense. I mean, you see it in every culture. Blood oaths, blood brothers... it’s always treated as something more than just... liquid. Olivia: Far more. In the ancient world, it was seen as the very essence of life, something almost magical. George brings up this amazing example from Homer's Odyssey. When Odysseus travels to the underworld, the ghosts are just witless shadows. They can't speak or recognize him. Jackson: Right, they're just sort of... there. Phantoms. Olivia: Exactly. Until he sacrifices a sheep and lets its blood run into a pit. The ghosts flock to it, desperate to drink. And only after his mother's spirit drinks the dark blood can she recognize him and speak. The blood literally gives her a flicker of life back. Jackson: Wow, so the idea is that blood can actually reanimate the dead, even if just for a moment? It's not just a metaphor for life, it's the literal fuel. Olivia: It was seen that way for centuries. The book mentions that for two thousand years, a common 'cure' for epilepsy in Europe was to drink the fresh, warm blood of a dying gladiator or an executed criminal. People would rush the scaffold with cups. Jackson: That is absolutely insane. But it shows how powerful that belief was. If blood is life, then consuming it must transfer that life. It has a certain grim logic to it. But you also mentioned blood as a taboo. How does that fit in? It seems like a total contradiction. Olivia: It's the central paradox of the book. At the very same time some people saw blood as a magical cure, others saw it as the ultimate pollutant, a source of immense danger and corruption. The most chilling example of this is the history of "blood libel." Jackson: I've heard that term, but I'm not totally clear on what it is. Olivia: It’s a horrific anti-Semitic myth that dates back to the Middle Ages. George recounts the story of William of Norwich in 1144. A young boy is found dead, and a rumor starts that the Jewish community murdered him to use his blood in their Passover rituals. Jackson: Oh man. And there was no evidence for this, I'm assuming. Olivia: None whatsoever. But the story spread like wildfire. It was a pretext for violence, for massacres, for seizing property. This accusation, this idea of "tainted blood" being used for evil, was weaponized against Jewish people for centuries. Jackson: That's terrifying. So the same substance is seen as a source of life for one group and a tool for persecution against another. It’s all about the story we tell about it. Olivia: Precisely. And that fear of "bad blood" or "polluted blood" never really goes away. George connects this historical fear to more modern taboos—the extreme shame and isolation surrounding menstruation in places like Nepal, or the initial panic and stigma around HIV in the 1980s. The fear of blood as a contaminant is a very deep and persistent part of our psychology.

Jackson: That’s a powerful connection. So how did we get from these ancient myths and deep-seated fears to the industrial-scale, sixty-seven-thousand-dollar-a-barrel industry you mentioned at the start? Olivia: It's a fascinating and complicated story, and it really begins with a shift from seeing blood as a commodity to seeing it as a gift. In the early 20th century, if you needed a transfusion, you were in trouble. There was no organized system. Jackson: So before that, you just had to... pay someone? Or hope a family member was a match and willing to help? Olivia: Pretty much. It was unreliable and often expensive. Then, in 1921, a man named Percy Lane Oliver, a quiet civil servant and Red Cross volunteer in London, got a call from a local hospital in desperate need of a donor. He couldn't find one right away, but the call stuck with him. From his own living room, using his own phone, he started organizing the world's first voluntary, on-call blood donor service. Jackson: From his living room? That’s incredible. Just one person deciding to solve a problem. Olivia: It was pure altruism. He created a panel of volunteers, people who would give their blood for free, simply because someone needed it. This "gift" model became the foundation for national services like the UK's National Health Service. But this beautiful, altruistic idea soon ran head-on into the crushing demands of industrial medicine. Jackson: What do you mean? Olivia: The big turning point was the development of treatments for hemophilia. Hemophiliacs lack a specific protein that helps blood clot, called Factor VIII. Before the 1970s, a simple fall could be fatal. Then, scientists figured out how to extract and concentrate Factor VIII from donated plasma. It was a miracle drug. Jackson: Okay, so that sounds like a huge win. What was the problem? Olivia: The problem was scale. To make one dose of Factor VIII, you needed plasma from thousands of different donors. The plasma was all pooled together into massive vats. Jackson: I think I see where this is going. If just one of those thousands of donors is sick... Olivia: The entire batch is contaminated. And that's exactly what happened. In the late 70s and early 80s, a new virus was spreading: HIV. At the same time, the demand for Factor VIII was so high that the UK and other countries started importing plasma from the United States. And the US system was very different from Percy Oliver's. It was commercial. Jackson: They paid people for plasma. Olivia: Yes. And the book is unflinching about this. Plasma collection centers were set up in the poorest neighborhoods, on Skid Row, and even inside prisons. They paid desperate people a few dollars for their plasma. These were high-risk populations for infectious diseases like Hepatitis and HIV. And all that plasma went into the same vats. Jackson: That's a nightmare. It's the industrial scale that created both the miracle and the disaster. Olivia: It was a public health catastrophe. Nearly the entire community of hemophiliacs in the UK was infected with HIV or Hepatitis C. George tells the story of the boys at Treloar, a boarding school for disabled children. The doctors gathered them in a room and just went down the line: "You have it, you don't, you have it." They were told they had maybe two years to live. It was a death sentence delivered by the very medicine that was supposed to save them. Jackson: That is just heartbreaking. And it all traces back to this shift from blood as a gift to blood as a commodity, sourced from the most vulnerable people. Olivia: Exactly. The book calls the US the "OPEC of plasma" because it still dominates the global market, a market built on this commercial model. It raises profound ethical questions about whether we should ever put a price on a substance so fundamental to life.

Jackson: So, listening to all this, it feels like blood is a mirror. It reflects our greatest fears, our highest ideals of altruism, and also our most dangerous greed. Olivia: That's a perfect way to put it. Rose George shows us that blood is never just blood. It’s a story we tell ourselves about purity, danger, community, and commerce. The journey from a volunteer ringing up donors from his living room to a global industry that both saves and, tragically, has destroyed lives, shows how critical it is to manage this precious resource with ethics at the forefront. Jackson: And it makes you think about the simple act of donation in a whole new light. It’s not just giving a pint of blood; it’s contributing to this incredibly complex, powerful system. Olivia: Absolutely. And for anyone listening who is able, it’s a reminder of the profound impact that one simple, altruistic act can have. The book really makes you appreciate the silent, life-saving gift that flows through our world every single day. Jackson: It's a fascinating and sometimes unsettling read. We'd love to hear what you think. Find us on our socials and share the most surprising thing you learned about blood. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.