Bloody Nora
You'd better rumble those potatoes right
Stitch-up
In Nine Pints, my concluding chapter was about the future of blood. Or more accurately the future of blood science. I wrote about how immortality or longevity was the “holy grail” of blood science, with teams such as one led by Amy Wagers looking for whatever made older mice younger when their circulatory systems were attached to those of younger mice. That is as ick as it sounds. Parabiosis, I think, is a powerful illustration of human arrogance about other animals, and our conviction that we are the greatest animal of all. I mean, look at this.
That is on the website of the University of Massachussetts’ medical school so I presume they have no shame. Of course the justification is that if it betters humans, it is allowable.
No.
Stitching together animals so humans can spend years researching in order to add a few years to our lifespan is not allowable. I will die sooner rather than inflict 👇 this on sentient creatures who have to endure this for our own ends and so we can delay our ends.
What was I talking about? Blood. Life. In Nine Pints, I wrote about the extraordinary names that companies seeking the secrets of blood were giving themselves.
I glimpse this excitement in the names of companies founded to sound the depths of what blood can do for us. I read about Illumina, a massive DNA-sequencing company that has launched a start-up to work on a blood test that can detect cancer. It has raised $1 billion in funding from investors including Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Of course it is called Grail. My database has hundreds of documents and articles about the widening and deepening abilities of blood to diagnose, defy death, defeat disease, with what has come to be called a liquid biopsy. I learn that blood will soon be able to diagnose manifold cancers, dementia, depression, with what is always called “a simple blood test.”
And now, look. Grail has developed a “simple blood test” called Galleri that seems like it may work. And I will have to eat my scepticism. Because if it can detect 50 cancers in blood, by seeking out the different DNA of cancer cells, then that is wonderful. If it revolutionises cancer care, ditto. Even Cancer Research UK is cautiously enthusiastic.
Yikes though.
Dr Thomas Round, an academic GP and primary care lead at King’s College London Cancer Prevention Trials Unit, said earlier studies suggested that about 40 per cent of people testing positive would go on to be diagnosed with cancer.
I still think Grail is an unfortunate name. Impossible not to think of Indiana Jones and Monty Python rather than clever DNA-seeking blood tests. And why “Galleri”? I will love a simple blood test that actually works but I’d rather it weren’t named after a shopping centre.
Fry-up
On Monday I was allowed to attend a training course at the National Federation of Fish Friers. (Fryer? Frier?) I don’t eat fish and don’t like it and don’t think I’ve ever had fish and chips (but I’ve had plenty of chips), but even so when I was a child I cut up hundreds of chips and fish out of paper and set up a fish and chip shop on a spare bed. So that young child was giddy with excitement about getting into NFFF’s test kitchen and test fish and chip shop, not least because the NFFF building about a mile from my house looks mysterious and tiny, and I’m so pleased it is a Tardis of fish and chipness.
I’ll be writing about my day in my book, but for now I’ll say this: making good fish and chips is COMPLICATED. Next time you order a fish supper, don’t just ask where your fish is from. (Though if you are asking, ask how it was caught, too.) Ask how long the potatoes have been rumbled for; whether they’ve been drywited; whether the batter has a flow rate of 25 seconds; whether the chips have been blanched for 7 minutes and fried again for 1. At the least the fryer (frier?) may look at you in a new light.
I’ve had some excellent work-related pictures in my time: down sewers, sitting on sanitary pads, on a ship. But this is definitely going into my collection:
To all the food service professionals out there, I apologise for that combination of open-toed shoes and hot oil. The best chips out of all the ones that we tested? Pre-prepped already-cut and treated potatoes, blanched (cooked through but not coloured) for 7 minutes at 140 degrees then fried for one more minute at 160. It is only when you have delicious fish shop chips — crispy outer, fluffy inner — that you realise how many poor ones you get.
Reading corner
Only two links this week but they are good.
Oli Franklin-Wallis is about to publish a book on waste called Wasteland. (He tweeted some of his alternative titles and I’d have preferred “Everything is Rubbish” beacuse that’s how I’m feeling this week but I know all about fighting about titles with your publishers and still have to tell people that I didn’t write two separate books about shipping). Here he is in Unherd being sensible and incisive about why the UK is having a particularly bad time with shit and sewage.
I’m reviewing the book so can’t comment on it but if you think that piece is good and want to read several more thousand words on where our shit and rubbish goes, you can pre-order or buy the book here. It’s out on 22 June.
Kathleen Stock is getting better and better with everything she writes. Stop it Doc, you’re making every other writer look bad. Here she is on Elizabeth Gilbert’s frankly weird decision to withdraw a book because it was set in Russia. Nuts. But Doc is not nuts, she’s brilliant.
Animal of the week
I started learning to scuba dive for my book. I began in a pool in Leeds, and didn’t much enjoy it, so I started all over again when I was on a work trip to Senegal. Learning to dive in the Bay of Dakar is quite different to the John Charles leisure centre, and second time around I loved, loved, loved it. (I’m sad that Scuba Leeds has gone bust though.) So this week’s animal is a sea creature. Mila is a Beluga whale who lives at an attraction called Polar Land in Harbin, north China. (Or lived; I do not have her latest news.)
In 2009, a young Chinese woman named Yun Yang was taking part in a free-diving competition in a 20-metre tank at Polar Land. It was an arctic pool, and free-diving means no oxygen or equipment. Yun got into difficulties: the cold deadened her legs.
I began to choke and sank even lower and I thought that was it for me – I was dead. Until I felt this incredible force under me driving me to the surface.
Mila nudged Yun upwards, grabbing Yun’s leg with her mouth, before any humans had noticed she was struggling.
Belugas are known for their intelligence and playfulness. Their head is known as a “melon,” says the World Wildlife Fund. They’re also supposed to be smiley.
Belugas are endangered in the ocean because of human pollution and hunting. Nice one, humanity.