Edwin Cohn and the Harvard Blood Factory

Never heard of him before so the title was a bit “wtf”. The second paragraph is an excellent overview of why this is interesting:

>In 1940, with the likelihood of America’s involvement in World War II steadily rising, the U.S. military approached Cohn about developing medical products from blood proteins to treat shock and blood loss in soldiers. Cohn’s team quickly invented methods to make blood albumin, which had a notable positive impact on soldiers’ survival from the earliest days of the American war effort. During the Normandy beach landings, many wounded soldiers were treated with Cohn’s albumin products. And, by the end of 1945, his Harvard team of scientists were so effective at turning lab discoveries into commercial-scale products that millions of Cohn’s blood products were used in all theaters of the war effort.

Knowing that you are in a war for your existence -- which is how a lot of people viewed WWII -- does tend to refocus your objectives.

I wish we would approach climate change this way.