Editor of Blood reviews a very bloody movie

Do all the bloody scenes from some of last year’s top-rated movies-There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Sweeney Todd-suggest that the American Society of Hematology is doing product placement? Cynthia E. Dunbar, MD, editor-in-chief of Blood, says no. “But we’d be happy if anyone ever had a hematologist in a movie,” she wrote in a review of Oscar winner No Country for Old Men for the Sunday newspaper supplement USA Weekend (March 28-30, 2008, page 11).

The magazine invited her to review the movie upon its DVD release. Dr. Dunbar, a hematologist at the National Institutes of Health, said the violence in the film didn’t bother her, and, like so many others, she thought “the last quarter of the movie was confusing.” At the end of the review, Dr. Dunbar did manage to insert a product placement for the study of blood. “Even though blood may not seem aesthetically pleasing shooting out of people, under the microscope, it’s very visual, especially if you stain the cells with different dyes,” she wrote.