In the blood : how two outsiders solved a centuries-old medical mystery and took on the US Army
(Book)

The incredible true story of how an absent-minded inventor and a down-on-his-luck salesman joined forces to create a once in a generation lifesaving product-and were persecuted for it by the U.S. Army. At the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, dramatized by the popular film Black Hawk Down, the majority of soldiers who died bled to death before they could even reach an operating table. This tragedy reinforced the need for a revolutionary treatment that could transform trauma medicine. So, when Frank Hursey and Bart Gullong-who had no medical or military experience-discovered that a cheap, crushed rock called zeolite had blood clotting properties, they brought it to the military's attention. The Marines and the Navy adopted the resulting product, QuikClot, immediately. The Army, however, resisted. It had two products of its own being developed to prevent excessive bleeds, one of which had already cost eighty million dollars. The other, "Factor Seven," had a more dangerous complication: its side effects could be deadly. Unwilling to let its efforts end in failure-and led by the highly influential surgeon Major John Holcomb-the Army set out to smear the reputations of the inventors whose product, they claimed, had its own risk. Over the course of six years, Hursey and Gullong engaged in an epic struggle with Holcomb for recognition-until a whistle blower inside the Army exposed Holcomb's financial ties to the pharmaceutical company that produced Factor Seven, a discovery that led to a massive lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. By withholding QuikClot-which would later become the medical miracle of the Iraq War-and using Factor Seven with its known, life threatening risks, Holcomb imperiled countless American lives. Using deep reportage and riveting prose, In the Blood recounts this little known David and Goliath story of corruption, greed, and power within the military-and the devastating, fatal consequences of unchecked institutional arrogance.