I'm A-negative, dammit...

Being in nephrology, and dealing 50+ hours a week with hundreds dialysis patients who often need blood, this is very promising. In fact. out local hospitals have had to cancel many surgeries due to a SEVERE blood shortage. My father, who died with leukemia and treatment-related anemia could possibly have benefited from discoveries that are certain to spin off from this discovery.

Also, I wonder if this process could aid in compatibility for donors (the vast majority of my patients never get kidneys).

I have to check into this more.

Great article, AF. In your honour I am putting in the DVD of the movie that was doubtlessly named after you.

Not sure which states are in that "handful" but I live in Oregon and you don't have to wait, as long as your tattoo was done with a sterilized needle by a licensed artist.

O snap!

So am I.

While I was in japan I was asked all the time, to which I could only answer I dont know. Almost everyone that asked was horrified at my answer

Hey-O!




. . . Hehehe. So easy! And so amusing!

I thought it was only O negative that was the universal donor. I'm O positive, and I'm pretty sure I was told that my blood works for 85% of people, but it's only O negative that's the universal one.

But yeah, I'm with johaanfaust: he feels 100% less special now, but I feel at least 85% less special now.

On the upside, though, I don't have to feel as guilty about not being able to give blood for six months when I get new piercings.

Me too!

O+

This benefits us Os the most since we're the only ones who can only recieve O. Those ABs don't get anything out of the deal. I'm all for being less special in exchange for having more blood available for me if I need it.

this reminds me of a pick up line my buddy once used jokingly, which was "i love you, what's your blood type?" if you were there it was pretty hilarious. i just thought of that since most of the people are sharing their blood type.

Aww get a room and quit transfusing all over the internets!

I'd really love to give blood, but I got a tattoo in november so I'm still ineligible...

for now...

I also don't know my blood type, because I've never been told (although with the amount of blood work I've had done, I really don't think it would've been that big a deal for them to type me while they were at it...) that's part of the reason I want to give blood, so they can type me!

Blood type is a categorization of blood based on surface characteristics of blood cells. It's been a while since I went over this, but as I understand it, blood and body cells in each person carry a series of markers that effectively shortcut the infection-fighting process; if a white blood cell chances across one of your other cells and recognizes the markers, it recognizes the cell as friendly and doesn't attack it. This might not (and probably isn't) what those markers are for, but it's the important thing to note so far as blood donation is concerned, because if you pump blood with the wrong markers in, white blood cells from the body will recognize the new blood as foreign and attack it.

There were originally thought to be two types of factors, called A and B (O signifies the absence of either, AB signifying the presence of both), but blood donations still suffered a 15% rejection rate. They discovered the reason was a third factor, called the Rh factor, hence the addition of a + or - to indicate presence of the factor. Having AB+, then, means you have all 3 factors and are effectively a universal recipient, because your body will accept blood and tissue with any factors and not reject it (it should be noted that while white blood cells will attack tissue/blood with foreign factors, the absence of those factors will not trigger a response), while a O- is a universal donor, because anyone can accept their tissue/blood and not reject it.