We put this to Professor Adrian Newland:

Adrian - Blood cells are made in the bone marrow. In the bone space - in particular in the pelvis, in the bones of the back, the ribs and the sternum. They’re made from stem cells that then incorporate protein, iron, all the building blocks of haemoglobin that then encapsulate in cells that are pushed out into the blood. Many millions of cells every day.

We put this to Professor Adrian Newland:

Adrian - The gut has lots of areas of immune system throughout it to try and deal with any infections that come in through the mouth and go down into the gut. The tonsils themselves are particularly important early on in life. That is one of the reason kids and teenagers have such problems with their tonsils. They get exposed to airborne bugs. They stimulate the tonsils to develop immunities to those bugs and the tonsils get bigger and cause bouts of tonsillitis.

Helen - I had my tonsils out when I was little and it wasn’t very nice at all. Since then I’ve been absolutely fine.

We put this to Professor Adrian Newland:

Adrian - Yes. I’m not aware of any body farms in the UK unless they are hidden away somewhere.

Chris - You’re not aware of any body farms in America?

Adrian - No I’m not aware of body farms in America actually. We do have a lot of tissue banks that certainly have been regulated following the human tissue act that came through. These are a very important resource if researchers want to have material to look at, either disease or to look at normal tissue. If you want to find out the cause of a particular sort of thyroid for instance, you can get them from the bank. You can get 30 samples and look at them.

We put this to Professor Adrian Newland:

Adrian - In diseases such as Wegener’s which is an autoimmune disease it’s the immune system, the lymphocytes that actually cause immune damage. CamPath just removes those whatever the disease and will deal with that.

Chris - It’ll take away the cell that is causing the disease so the disease gets better.

We put this to Professor Adrian Newland:

Adrian - It may eventually clot but at the operation site blood gets activated so the clotting factor’s actually get stimulated and removed so the blood is able to clot and it will build up around the wound and cause damage and prevent healing. It’s sucked out.

Chris - When you say clotting factors, Adrian, what actually are they?

Adrian - They’re little cells called platelets but also chemicals within the blood called clotting factors.

Chris - How do they work?

Adrian - They work by becoming activated by raw tissue and they form a little spider’s web that brings the blood together.

Chris - And it grabs blood cells, presumably? It forms this meshwork and you don’t bleed any more. If you’ve got oozing through that just plasma and things what Thomas might have been seeing in his drain was just plasma minus these things that have already been removed?

Adrian - Yes. It might have been exudate that oozed out and was being sucked away.

We put this to Professor Adrian Newland:

Adrian - About 650 calories, which I’m reliably informed is 3 Mars bars.

Chris - Why would it take energy to replace blood?

Adrian - Anything that develops tissue requires energy.

Chris - So what you’re saying is you just need to put the energy back in.