LRN No.34: medicine for grief
Plus: good timing
In the nine and a half months following the Hamas attack on October 7 2023, sperm was successfully taken from the bodies of 160 soldiers and 15 civilians. In 132 out of the 175 retrievals, it was at the request of the dead man’s parents, rather than his partner. They want to be able to use it to create grandchildren after their son’s death.
The dead man does not need to have provided prior written consent for his sperm to be taken — or used — after death. In a country where many are descendants of Holocaust survivors, family continuation is deemed paramount. It’s assumed that everyone wants to have kids. Where pronatalism, grief and reproductive technology collide, the question of whether the young men who died would actually have wanted their sperm taken and used to create grandchildren for their bereaved parents is merely an afterthought.
In July, I visited Israel to report a piece for the Financial Times Magazine about what happens when grief and reproductive technology combine, the creation of life after death, and the boundaries being pushed as a consequence of war.
I spoke to some extraordinary people for it, and Amit Elkayam has captured them so beautifully in the photographs that accompany the piece.
It’s out in hard copy in tomorrow’s FT Magazine, but it’s already online. Here’s a gift link that should work for a day or so.
This LRN is going to be on the short side, because a huge glut of my work is about to be unleashed. I am currently drowning in PDF page proofs, GoogleDoc drafts and WeTransfered audio files.
Some of these pieces of work have been in the pipeline for years, yet for reasons beyond my control they are all being broadcast or published over the next ten days.
Between now and the LRN, please look out for:
My Guardian Long Read on a revolutionary new digital therapy for people who hear voices. That’s out on Tuesday 29th October. (It took me 11 years - ELEVEN YEARS - to make this piece actually happen.)
The launch of Series Two of The Gift, which arrives as a boxed set on BBC Sounds/wherever you get your podcasts from Monday 4th November, and broadcasts weekly on BBC Radio 4 from Wednesday 6th November
A Sunday Times Magazine article with an exclusive deep dive into one of the episodes of The Gift, out on Sunday 3rd November
A new president of the United States of America.
Things that have caught my eyes and ears:
Loved this profile of the man behind the UK’s fastest rollercoaster, by the peerless Tom Lamont
Took my family to the National Gallery to see fabulous the Van Gogh exhibition,
Also took them to see the Haegue Yang exhibition at the Hayward Gallery which was very strange. A must-go show, if you’re into venetian blinds
Caught David Baddiel talking about his family - and I mean ALL about his family - at the Union Chapel