Blood
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Henry Louis Gates, In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past (Crown Publishers, 2009). Of particular interest to me were the chapters about Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Bliss Broyard.
Troy Duster, Backdoor to Eugenics, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2003).
Katharina Schramm, David Skinner, and Richard Rottenburg, Identity Politics and the New Genetics: Re/Creating Categories of Difference and Belonging (Berghahn Books, 2012).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I WOULD LIKE TO extend first thanks to my wife, Miranda Hill, who supported me in every way imaginable over the course of this book project. Miranda helped me conceive the idea for this book about blood, reassured me that I could do it when my own doubts surfaced, and offered a stream of suggestions about research and revisions. She was my first reader, an astute critic, and a motivating cajoler. Our children — Geneviève, Caroline, and Andrew Hill and Eve and Beatrice Freedman — all pitched in to see me through this project. Geneviève read and commented on numerous drafts, Caroline offered research on vampires and tainted blood, Andrew helped organize my office and files, Eve informed me about Artemisia Gentileschi, and Beatrice asked every month, “How’s that book coming?”
I ALSO WISH TO THANK John Fraser, Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, for finding and funding two diligent, imaginative researchers. Taylor Martin, a mechanical engineer currently enrolled in a graduate program in health administration at the University of Toronto, covered medical and scientific research questions. James McKee, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Toronto, researched social, cultural, and historical issues. Both Taylor and James sent me research notes, scholarly articles, dissertations, and book references, always operating with efficiency and grace under pressure. Abbie Buckman, Marilyn Verghis, Caroline Hill, Geneviève Hill, and Miranda Hill also provided valuable research assistance.
MY GRANDFATHER, THE AMERICAN theologian and African Methodist Episcopal Church minister Daniel G. Hill Jr., used to ask me, while he leaned on his cane, to “prop me up on every leaning side.” I thought of my grandfather as I relied, all too heavily, on scholars, lawyers, and physicians to prop up my early drafts on every leaning side. They were all generous enough to offer constructive criticism, advice, and encouragement as I waded in waters in which they have swum for years.
Chris Andersen, a Métis scholar in the Faculty of Native Studies and Director of the Rupertsland Centre for Métis Research at the University of Alberta.
Sports journalist Stephen Brunt, on boxing and about performance-enhancing drugs in sport.
Marie Carrière, Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature and Director of the Canadian Literature Centre at the University of Alberta.
Avram Denburg, paediatrician and Haematology/Oncology Fellow at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
Daniel Heath Justice, a Colorado-born Canadian citizen of the Cherokee Nation and Associate Professor and Chair of the First Nations Studies Program at the University of British Columbia.
Audrey Macklin, Professor and Chair in Human Rights Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.
Minelle Mahtani, Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto, and author of the forthcoming Mixed Race Cartographies: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality in Canada (University of British Columbia Press, 2014).
Émile Martel, a poet who has translated Sor Juana’s poetry into French in Écrits profanes: un choix de textes (Écrits des Forges, 1996).
Eric M. Meslin, Director, Indiana University Center for Bioethics, and Associate Dean for Bioethics, Indiana University School of Medicine.
Judith H. Newman, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and Early Judaism, Emmanuel College and the Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto.
André Picard, who has written extensively about Canada’s tainted-blood scandal.
Jana Rieger, Professor, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Alberta.
Jean Teillet, Métis lawyer, great-grandniece of Louis Riel, and partner in the law firm Pape Salter Teillet.
Karina Vernon, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto.
Michael K. Schuessler, a professor in the Department of Humanities at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City.
Sukanya Pillay, an international lawyer who works in Toronto with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
THESE KIND SOULS SET ASIDE TIME for interviews with me:
Bruce Baum, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, on the historical roots of racist ideology.
Lawyers Margaret Rosling and Thomas R. Berger, Q.C., with the Vancouver law firm Aldridge and Rosling, on Aboriginal identity.
Daniel Coleman, Professor of English at McMaster University, on blood in religious texts.
Glen Coulthard, a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation and Assistant Professor of First Nations Studies and Political Science at the University of British Columbia, on Aboriginal identity.
My aunt Doris Hill Cochran, on matters of family culture.
My mother, Donna Hill, on family culture and on the story of Harry Narine-Singh.
Wayne Grady, writer, on racial passing in his family.
Karen Grose, educational leader and superintendent with the Toronto District School Board, on adoption.
Amanda Jernigan, poet, on blood and identity.
Cangene Corporation employee Cheryl Lawson, on the history of plasma donations in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Winnipeg resident Raymonde Marius, on donating her own plasma more than one thousand times.
University of British Columbia sociologist Renisa Mawani, on blood and identity.
Ania Szado, writer, on von Willebrand disease.
Trent Stellingwerff, Senior Exercise Physiologist with the Canadian Sport Institute, on the effect of exercise on the bloodstream, and on doping and performance-enhancement drugs in sport.
Patty Solomon, Associate Dean of Rehabilitation Science at McMaster University, on blood and stigma.
Mark Wainberg, Director of the McGill University AIDS Centre and Professor of Medicine at McGill University, and Kris Wells, Associate Director of the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services at the University of Alberta, both on blood donation policies pertaining to gay men.
FOR IDEAS, SUGGESTIONS, CORRECTIONS, contacts, meals, and all manner of encouragement during this writing project, I also wish to thank writers Margaret Atwood, Randy Boyagoda, David Chariandy, Wayson Choy, and Pura López-Colomé; scholars Neil Brooks, Carol Duncan, Christl Verduyn, and Jack Veugelers; educators Grace Centritto, Tina Conlon, and David Cristelli; lawyers David Cohn, Bryan Finlay, and Seth Weinstein; marathoner Reid Coolsaet and hurdler Perdita Felicien, both Olympians; physicians Anjali Anselm, Mark Crowther, Hertzel Gerstein, and David Price; journalist Lisa Robinson; social worker Robyn Smith; the professors and students at the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana in Mexico City; and Pierre Sved, Gloria Antoinetti, Shauna Hemingway, and Ginette Martin at the Canadian embassy in Mexico City; as well as my friends Jennifer Conkie, Carol Finlay, Richard Longley, Jeanie MacFarlane, David Morton, Myra Novogrodsky, Alice Repei, David Steen, Jane Walker, and Gayle Waters.
THANKS AS WELL TO my assistant, Lauren Repei, for her good cheer and diligent work; my agent, Ellen Levine at Trident Media Group, for her dedicated negotiations on my behalf; my devoted, hardworking, and ever encouraging editor, Janie Yoon at House of Anansi Press; Peter Norman for copy-editing; Gillian Watts and Chelsey Catterall for proofreading; Philip Coulter and Bernie Lucht at CBC Radio for assistance with the book and with its adaptation to public lectures and radio broadcasts; and to John Fraser, Anna Luengo, Amela Marin, Liz Hope, and Hannah Allen at Massey College at the University of Toronto, for housing me in
Toronto during research trips.
THANK YOU TO THE staff at the University of Toronto’s Robarts Library. I scoured countless books and articles, and couldn’t have done it without you. Sometimes I wonder if there is a book in the world that is not in your stacks. Please know that I accepted the invitation to write this book and deliver the 2013 Massey Lectures first and foremost to score a fully loaded University of Toronto library card. Thank you for that. Could I get another, next year?
INDEX
Abbott, Anderson Ruffin, 156
Aboriginal peoples: as defined by blood quantum, 196, 203, 208; and irrelevance of identity definitions, 199, 200, 310. See also First Nations; Inuit; Métis; Native peoples
Abraham and Isaac, 77
Abraham, Carolyn, 310
Adams, John, 151
Adams, John Quincy, 151
adoption, 157, 205, 312; transracial/international, 159
Africa: black ancestry in, 135, 180, 191, 213, 309; familial (non-kinship) ties in, 164; malaria in, 47
African-American experience: of author’s ancestors, 146, 276; of blood segregation policy, 100, 102, 111, 113; of citizenship, 170; in health care field, 100-2; of mixed-race identity, 191, 195, 213; of “passing,” 156, 293; of slavery, 48, 135, 146, 191, 195, 197, 198, 213, 303; of slave/servant women, 194, 272, 278, 303; in sports, 69, 70, 123
African American Lives (mini-series), 309
African-Canadian experience: of hidden black ancestry, 156; with Ku Klux Klan, 301; of slavery, 154, 293. See also family of author
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, 146, 277, 278
AIDS, 9, 314; and gay blood donor ban, 109; and HIV, 109, 134, 138, 272; and tainted blood scandal, 108, 109. See also gay blood donors, ban on; tainted blood scandal
Al Abrash, Jothima, 26
Alamance General Hospital (North Carolina), 104
Ali, Muhammad, 247
Alma-Tadema, Lawrence: The Women of Amphissa, 223
American Medical Association, 114
American Red Cross, 33, 102, 113
Andersen, Chris, 200
anemia, 46, 67, 90, 126
Angelou, Maya, 309
animals, blood sports involving, 65, 243, 250
apartheid, in South Africa, 191, 193, 212
Aphrodite, 83
Arenal, Electa, and Amanda Powell, 237
Aristotle, 36, 37, 221
Arkansas Department of Correction, 107
Armstrong, Lance, 20, 116, 121, 124, 132; testimony against, 118, 129; Winfrey’s interviews of, 116, 130
Artemisia (film), 85
Astaphan, Jamie, 122
atomic bombing of Japan, 91
Ayurveda (medicine of ancient India), 24
Bacchanalia, 223
Bacchus, and female followers of, 223, 239
Backhouse, Constance, 207
Banting, Frederick, 62
Baril, Francine and Pierre, 47
Baum, L. Frank: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 227
Bemberg, María Luisa: Yo, la peor de todas (film), 240
Beothuk (people), 273
Best, Charles, 62
Bethune, Norman, 32
Bird, J. Edward, 183
blood: author’s earliest experiences with, 1; as class/status marker, 18, 66, 147; as defining/identifying us, 10, 134; families and, 142; language and, 18, 64; power/public spectacle and, 11, 217; religion and, 11, 26, 63, 142, 233; religious taboos against, 26, 38, 142, 234; secrets revealed by, 11, 276; truth/honour and, 10, 67. See also specific topics; entries immediately below
blood, as physical entity, 13; circulation of, 8, 22, 28; clotting of, 16, 21, 46, 55; colour of, 18; components of, 14, 46, 138; diseases of, 46; DNA testing of, 230, 286, 302; donations of, 22, 31, 74, 98; letting of, 24; and menstruation, 34, 234; removing stains of, 280, 283; Rh factor of, 21, 33, 51; and sports cheating, 115; stain pattern analysis of, 285; storage/transport of, 32, 46, 102; and theory of humours, 22, 148; transfusion of, 29; types of, 21, 31, 32, 63, 98. See also specific topics and blood diseases
blood banks/depots, 32, 102; criminal activity and, 230
blood brothers, 65; in Norse legend, 165
blood clotting, 9, 21, 22, 46, 55; plasma/platelets and, 14, 15, 16, 107; prevention of, 25, 32, 34, 117
blood donations, 22, 31, 74, 98; by black population, 100, 102, 111, 113; by gay population, 109; person-to-person, 31; storage/transport of, 32, 102; and tainted blood scandal, 107; as ultimate gift, 34, 98, 107; wartime innovations and, 32, 34, 102. See also blood transfusion; tainted blood scandal
blood doping, 116, 124; agencies fighting, 118, 124, 126, 128; by Armstrong, 20, 116, 121, 124, 132; and history of sports cheating, 119; improved testing for, 124, 128, 130; legal alternatives to, 126
bloodletting, 24, 239; deaths following, 26; methods of, 24; police use of, 232
“blood libel,” against Jews, 265
“blood purity,” 260; of Aboriginal peoples, 196, 203, 208; apartheid and, 191, 193, 212; blood segregation policy and, 102; genocide and, 212, 269, 288; in Harry Potter books, 262, 265; Holocaust and, 154, 212, 263, 288, 313; of Jews, 154, 264, 265, 288, 313; and Mexican caste system, 187; of mixed-race people, 187; and “one-drop” rule, 192, 213; and Spanish persecution of Jews/Muslims, 225, 265, 313
blood quantum, Aboriginal: in Canada, 203, 208; in U.S., 196
blood removal, forcible: by blood traffickers, 229; as Holocaust experiment, 229; by police, 231; by witches, 222, 227, 228
blood segregation policy (U.S.), 100, 102, 111, 113
blood sports: animals and, 65, 243, 250; boxing, 70, 241, 245; hockey fighting, 65, 244; ultimate fighting, 245, 248
bloodstain pattern analysis, 285
blood testing, 6, 8, 10, 11, 138; for alcohol, 232; of athletes, 124, 128; for HIV/AIDS and other viruses, 111, 114. See also DNA testing
blood transfusion, 29, 46, 55, 98, 315; author’s experience of, 138; and blood doping, 116, 125, 127; and blood segregation policy, 100, 102, 111, 113; and blood storage/transport, 32, 102; and compatible blood types, 31, 32, 139; early attempts at, 29, 315; person-to-person, 31; and Rh factor, 33, 52; and tainted blood, 47, 107, 314; wartime innovations and, 32, 34, 102
blood types, 21, 31, 32, 63, 98, 139
“blueblood” (term), 18, 66, 147
Blum, Sid, 187
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 181
Blundell, James, 30
Bodyform (sanitary pad manufacturer), 40
bone marrow, 16, 20, 46, 89, 98. See also entry below
bone marrow transplants, 15, 22, 89; finding donors for, 92, 180; as legacy of atomic bomb, 91, 94; for leukemia patients, 90; risks of, 90; and stem cell research, 89
Bontems, Roger, 257
Boston Marathon, 20, 99, 119, 249
boxing, 70, 241, 245
Boyle, Robert, 250
Brewster, Elizabeth, 155
Brighteyes, Peter John, 231
British Red Cross, 31
Broyard, Alexandra, 296, 297
Broyard, Anatole, 295
Broyard, Bliss: One Drop, 296, 297
Broyard, Gala, 297
Broyard, Todd, 296
Buffet, Claude, 257
bullfighting, 65, 243
Burns, Robert: “Tam o’ Shanter,” 228
Bush, George H. W., 151
Bush, George W., 93, 95, 151
Butler, Carrie, 194
Callender, James Thomson, 304
Cambridge University:
“I Need Feminism” protest at, 40
Canadian Blood Services, 109, 111
Canadian Diabetes Association, 57
Canadian Paediatric Society, 162
Canadian Red Cross Society, 108
Cangene Corporation, 54
capital punishment, 249, 254
Caplan, Arthur, 114
Capote, Truman: In Cold Blood, 251
Caravaggio, 77, 84
Carlos, John, 69
Carney, Scott, 229
casta paintings, Mexican, 188
Castro, Fidel, 149
Castro, Raúl, 149
Caucasian race, 181
Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity (Illinois), 95
certificate of degree of Indian blood (U.S. document), 196, 197
Charles I, 27, 28
Charles II, 26
Chase-Riboud, Barbara: Sally Hemings, 305
chaupadi (Hindu isolation of menstruating women), 40
Cherokee Freedmen of Oklahoma, 197, 198
Cherokee Nation, 197
Chinese Exclusion Act (U.S.), 170, 174
Chown, Bruce, 51
Chown, Samuel Dwight, 185
Cicero, 253
citizenship, 167; in ancient Rome, 168; in European Union, 173; Israeli, 173; jus sanguinis principle of, 168, 171; jus soli principle of, 168, 169; of Obama, 171; and race, 182; U.S., 170. See also entry below
citizenship, Canadian, 172; and deportation of Somali men, 176; and exclusion of “Asian” British subjects; 182; jus soli principle of, 170, 172; and jus sanguinis limitations, 172, 174; Komagata Maru incident and, 182; Narine-Singh case and, 186; Shabdeen case and, 167; and treatment of Japanese-Canadians, 174
Civil Code (France), 170
Clinton, Bill, 95
Coakley, Jenny and Gabriel, 279
Coakley, Maria, 278
Coakley, Marie, 276
Cochran, Doris Hill, 278
Cohen, Adam, 149
Cohen, Leonard, 149
Collins, Suzanne: The Hunger Games, 252
Columbia University, 101, 102
Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada (Krever Commission), 108
components of blood, 14, 46, 138; plasma, 14; platelets, 14, 15, 16; red blood cells, 14, 17; white blood cells, 14, 15. See also individual components
Connaught Laboratories, 52, 108
Constitution Act: (1867), 201, 212; (1982), 200, 203