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A major public inquiry opened yesterday into the scandal of contaminated blood being given to NHS patients in the 1970s and 80s. Up to 3,000 people died. The inquiry will investigate who knew what when, and whether there was any coverup of medical information. It will also, very painfully, highlight the impact on thousands of people whose lives were irrevocably changed by living with the stigma of becoming HIV positive or developing Hepatitis C. The inquiry will hear the heartbreak of bereavement, of terminated pregnancies, of the distress of relatives and those who became terminally ill. In listening to the voices of the people affected over the past few days, I’ve been struck by the particular power of this medical story for those of us not directly involved. And I think that the power of its impact is partly because it is about blood. Many people are squeamish about blood: we don’t really like to think about it. Some feel anxious about the sight of it, hidden as it is in our arteries and veins under our skin. There is no substitute for blood; it is our body’s transport system, carrying oxygen to our organs and taking away the waste. It flows, it surges, it energises. Our bodies literally pulsate with this extraordinary life force every minute of every day. It makes us dynamic creatures, never still, always moving. Perhaps it’s our primitive, pre-medical conviction that blood symbolises life itself, that gives it its symbolic power. Most religions address the fundamental potency of blood. The current hit film The Children Act from the novel by Ian McKewan, illustrates the power of our beliefs about blood and its meaning. In Christianity, blood is a potent symbol – the shedding of Christ’s blood, meaning the giving up of life itself has no less an effect than the redemption of the world. Conversely and shamefully, women’s blood, with which we are required to become familiar every month, has often been denigrated as unclean in Christianity and other religions. Blood, either way, is powerful in its reality and its meaning. If you prick us do we not bleed said Shakespeare’s Shylock – as a way of saying that our blood is something that should unify and vivify our connection with one another across religious, ethnic, national divides. A similar sentiment can connect us with every blood-filled creature on earth. And so we acknowledge the tragedy of its contamination, and the terrible consequences of that for so many. At the same time, celebrate the wonder of blood as an everyday miracle of our created bodily selves.