Review: Good Blood: A Doctor, a Donor, and the Incredible Breakthrough that Saved Millions of Babies

Good Blood: A Doctor, a Donor, and the Incredible Breakthrough that Saved Millions of Babies by Julian Guthrie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had never heard of Rh disease, despite my interest in all things medical and biological. When I came across this book, I thought it sounded fascinating. It was.

This book tells the story (so far) of Rh disease - a devastating illness where a mother’s body attacks her baby, due to a blood type incompatibility, leading to miscarriages, babies dying, and children born with brain damage. It shows how an effective treatment was found, and how we still don’t understand how it really works.

I found most of this book really interesting, but there were a few chapters that I found really tedious - mostly extraneous (to me) bits of James’s life. However, there weren’t many.

It was so fascinating to read about the initial idea, the frustrations of trying to get funding, the medical trials, the not so legal first use, and the eventual approval by the government of the vaccine. It was also interesting to follow the tale of James’s life, of how he came to have blood that was able to produce so many antibodies for the vaccine. The epilogue was important, there is still much work to be done, and it’s amazing to know that we still don’t understand how the vaccine works, or why James’s blood works how it does, nor have we managed to synthesise the antibodies. There is still so much work to be done on a disease that most of us in the wealthier parts of the world have never even heard of.

I was given a free copy of this book, my opinions are my own.

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