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The Man With the Golden Blood
First time accepted submitter Torontoman points out this story of a man with one of the rarest blood types in the world. Forty years ago, when ten-year-old Thomas went into the University Hospital of Geneva with a routine childhood infection, his blood test revealed something very curious: he appeared to be missing an entire blood group system. There are 35 blood group systems, organized according to the genes that carry the information to produce the antigens within each system. The majority of the 342 blood group antigens belong to one of these systems. The Rh system (formerly known as ‘Rhesus’) is the largest, containing 61 antigens. The most important of these Rh antigens, the D antigen, is quite often missing in Caucasians, of whom around 15 per cent are Rh D negative (more commonly, though inaccurately, known as Rh-negative blood). But Thomas seemed to be lacking all the Rh antigens. If this suspicion proved correct, it would make his blood type Rhnull – one of the rarest in the world, and a phenomenal discovery for the hospital hematologists.
You get your own blood drive:
http://www.archonstl.org/31/he...
Because while reading this you may eventually learn something?
Because it is shinning a light on some rare people who can only give a fuck?
He first donated as an 18-year-old in the army
As a 18-year-old Greek conscript marine i did the "1 day honorable leave donation", even if just the "1 hour away from the barracks" was good enough for me - 20 years later i proudly am in the process of getting a new donors card because the old is full with the records of my donations.
Donate blood!
That's interesting. Some things are the same everywhere. In the US Army we got the day off for donating blood, too. It's a great idea and was one of the few really nice perks. (Side note: every three-day weekend we automatically got a fourth day off. See the Army's not *that* bad, hah).
I eventually earned a five gallon donation lapel pin from the Red Cross after I left the service. I told someone this once and she said "You donated 5 gallons of blood today?" *faceslap* Well I'm B+ which is not rare but isn't really too common, either, it seems.
Though I've slacked on my donations lately. This is reminding me I should start thinking more about that.
Cheers AC Greek veteran!