What do you think?
Rate this book
Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood
After the atomic bombing at the end of World War II, anxieties about survival in the nuclear age led scientists to begin stockpiling and freezing hundreds of thousands of blood samples from indigenous communities around the world. These samples were believed to embody potentially invaluable biological information about genetic ancestry, evolution, microbes, and much more. Today, they persist in freezers as part of a global tissue-based infrastructure. In Life on Ice, Joanna Radin examines how and why these frozen blood samples shaped the practice known as biobanking.
The Cold War projects Radin tracks were meant to form an enduring total archive of indigenous blood before it was altered by the polluting forces of modernity. Freezing allowed that blood to act as a time-traveling resource. Radin explores the unique cultural and technical circumstances that created and gave momentum to the phenomenon of life on ice and shows how these preserved blood samples served as the building blocks for biomedicine at the dawn of the genomic age. In an era of vigorous ethical, legal, and cultural debates about genetic privacy and identity, Life on Ice reveals the larger picture—how we got here and the promises and problems involved with finding new uses for cold human blood samples.
The Cold War projects Radin tracks were meant to form an enduring total archive of indigenous blood before it was altered by the polluting forces of modernity. Freezing allowed that blood to act as a time-traveling resource. Radin explores the unique cultural and technical circumstances that created and gave momentum to the phenomenon of life on ice and shows how these preserved blood samples served as the building blocks for biomedicine at the dawn of the genomic age. In an era of vigorous ethical, legal, and cultural debates about genetic privacy and identity, Life on Ice reveals the larger picture—how we got here and the promises and problems involved with finding new uses for cold human blood samples.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published March 27, 2017
About the author
Joanna Radin
4 books6 followersJoanna Radin is Assistant Professor in the Program in History of Science and Medicine at Yale University.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 21, 2025
Wow! I really loved this stunning collection. Felt like the right mix of theoretical, empirical, creative. And gave me a whole new way to think about our modern, chilly world.
April 14, 2020
Remember my undergrad years as an assistant in a cellular biology lab. The hierarchy of freezers (+4, -20, -70, -196) and the multitude of zoological products (rat cell, bovine extract, rabbit antibody, goat anti-rabbit antibody, etc.) truly fascinated me.
Life On Ice is a brilliant book condensing issues in philosophy of life, medicine, anthropology, disease ecology, bioethics, Indigenous rights all into the technology of freezing (and thawing, and failing to freeze).
Life On Ice includes a variety of topics from the poetics of cryogenics in mid-20th century, to the Cold-War diplomacy & anxiety of serological epidemiology, to postcolonial collaboration with 'third-world' country, and to 21st century challenges about tissue repatriation.
This is definitely the kind of history I aspire to write in the future.
Life On Ice is a brilliant book condensing issues in philosophy of life, medicine, anthropology, disease ecology, bioethics, Indigenous rights all into the technology of freezing (and thawing, and failing to freeze).
Life On Ice includes a variety of topics from the poetics of cryogenics in mid-20th century, to the Cold-War diplomacy & anxiety of serological epidemiology, to postcolonial collaboration with 'third-world' country, and to 21st century challenges about tissue repatriation.
This is definitely the kind of history I aspire to write in the future.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews