Man-made blood is a great idea but it plays on my fears. What’s your fear?

Man-made red blood cells are to be transfused into humans within two years, the NHS have announced.

That’s great. Science is progressing and that can only benefit all mankind. It redoubles my faith in human ingenuity.

It also leaves me with a feeling of vague disquiet.

When NHS Blood Transplant announced this morning that laboratory-produced red blood cells will be used in clinical trials in humans by 2017, the first thing that entered my mind was the word Thalidomide.

My mother suffered morning sickness when carrying me in the early 1960s and was prescribed a drug to help with this.

Thankfully, it wasn’t Thalidomide, which caused about 10,000 children, worldwide, to be born with malformed limbs.

She would tell me of this lucky escape time and time again, saying that she had just trusted what the doctor told her because, surely, all these things are always tested and are safe. Aren’t they? But this was when the Thalidomide story broke and she spent a few months utterly terrified she had damaged her baby.

It had a profound effect upon her. She became rigidly anti-drugs. All drugs. If it was in pill form, she didn’t like it. She became frightened to even take aspirin and refused to allow her children (me and my brothers) to be given drugs as simple cod liver oil caplets, even though they consisted solely of cod liver oil in a solulable capsule.

She made us take spoonfulls of horrible cod liver oil from a bottle.

But her drugs fear, inevitably, had an effect on me. I’ve always regarded people who live with the effects of their mothers taking Thalidomide almost as my brothers and sisters, but I too have been left with an ingrained fear of drugs. There was never any chance of me becoming a drug addict when growing up. Never mind popping LSD tabs, I don’t even feel comfortable eating Tic-Tacs!

So when I read about man-made blood, I just can’t help worry that what seems a medical breakthrough might also be harmful. It is a feeling I have to fight.

I am 100% confident there will be no side-effects from man-made blood. I think the scientists who have developed this should be treated as heroes. I read with interest about how this project is one of eight goals of the 2020 Research and Development programme, which aims to develop transfusion, transplantation and regenerative medicine over the next five years.

The rational side of me, as I said at the start of this piece, feels pride in the achievements of human ingenuity.

And I really don’t want to sound like an anti-progress weirdo or a Luddite who can’t accept anything new. In fact, I’m not that. I’m one of those people who believes the world is getting better and better and that our descendants will live better, healthier lives than us.

I think medicine is making great strides forward and that one day all sicknesses will be cured.

But, I’m sorry, I’d think twice before agreeing to have man-made blood infused into my veins. That’s not intended as a comment on the skills of these scientists, it is an embarrassing admission of what a dafty I am!

We all have little foibles like this though, don’t we?

What’s yours? What are you frightened of that you shouldn’t be frightened of?