What Next - Could Artificial Blood Save Lives?
Slate Technology
Slate
4.6 • 636 Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
Blood has a very short shelf life, even under the best of conditions—and you can picture the less-than-ideal conditions where blood is frequently needed—which is why scientists have been working on a blood alternative. The results are promising.
Guest: Nicky Twilley, host of “Gastropod” podcast and author of Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet and Ourselves.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, and Rob Gunther.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:36.3 | So, Nikki, can I call you a vampire? |
| 0:42.0 | I mean, since we're friends. |
| 0:45.4 | Nikki Twilly is a reporter over at The New Yorker. |
| 0:48.5 | She also hosts a podcast called Gastropod. |
| 0:51.3 | So it makes sense that she likes to taste things, including blood, sort of. |
| 0:58.0 | You've actually tasted synthetic blood? |
| 1:02.0 | Yes, I have chugged a shot of synthetic blood. I don't think you can call me a real vampire, |
| 1:07.9 | only a fake vampire, which is a synthetic vampire, if you will. |
| 1:14.3 | Still a vampire. Still a vampire, but an artificial one. |
| 1:19.0 | Nikki says this shot glass full of so-called blood looked like a raspberry smoothie, but had a |
| 1:25.0 | salty tangle. She drank it in a lab that is |
| 1:29.7 | racing to create a replacement for the actual human blood that gets extracted and infused right now. |
| 1:36.8 | The Department of Defense has funded these scientists to the tune of $46 million. And their reason is |
| 1:43.5 | simple. Actual human blood could save a lot of lives, |
... |
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