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Man With the "Golden Arm" Has Saved Lives of 2 Million Babies
schwit1 writes: James Harrison, known as "The Man with the Golden Arm," has donated blood plasma from his right arm nearly every week for the past 60 years. Soon after Harrison became a donor, doctors called him in. His blood, they said, could be the answer to a deadly problem. Harrison was discovered to have an unusual antibody in his blood and in the 1960s he worked with doctors to use the antibodies to develop an injection called Anti-D. It prevents women with rhesus-negative blood from developing RhD antibodies during pregnancy. "In Australia, up until about 1967, there were literally thousands of babies dying each year, doctors didn't know why, and it was awful," explains Jemma Falkenmire, of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service. "Women were having numerous miscarriages and babies were being born with brain damage." It was the result of rhesus disease — a condition where a pregnant woman's blood actually starts attacking her unborn baby's blood cells. In the worst cases it can result in brain damage, or death, for the babies. Australia was one of the first countries to discover a blood donor with this antibody, so it was quite revolutionary at the time. Last year we ran a story about another person with "golden blood" named Thomas.
I owe him for the lives of both my daughters. I'm O+, my late wife was O-, and both girls were O+. My wife got Rhogam and both girls were healthy.
Mr. Harrison, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
A). Not entirely, no. They can isolate and concentrate it, maybe stimulate production, but full synthesis? I don't see that happening yet.
B). There are other people with a similar mutation, so he isn't the only possible source. He is just an example of a very reliable one. If it were necessary, they could screen all of Australia and possibly find several, even among his relatives.
Sadly for a lot of British folk in Canada, because of Mad Cow disease and the unknown incubation period, we're ineligible to give blood. Who knows how many Golden Arms are out there? I used to give blood regularly but that ended when I came to Canada. Not sure how many other countries have those kinds of restrictions.
From the article, it sounds like he developed the anitgen from having received more than 3 liters of blood during surgery as a youth. If I'm understanding correctly, his body was given blood incompatible with his own and so it created the antigen to deal with it. Does that mean that the hundred people in a typical city acquired it the same way, and that the number of people developing it will decrease as fewer people are given incompatible blood and those who have in the past die off?
I'm one of those. Most anybody with Rh negative blood type could be one.
The process is a bit squicky, at least in theory. I get matched up with an Rh + donor with roughly the same antigen profile as mine, I get injected with that donor's blood (it's quarantined for some period of time after donation, to make sure that the donor doesn't show signs of latent diseases like HIV), and my body starts making antibodies to the Rh factor in the donor blood. I donate plasma a couple times a week, the lab siphons off the antibodies I made, and turn it into a drug to give pregnant women. The whole cycle repeats about every 6 weeks or so. I get a decent little check every week for my time and some free cookies and apple juice, and the lab gets to make a product that they charge through the nose for. Win-win!
As a platelet donator myself I have nothing but respect for Mr. James Harrison
Unlike Mr. James Harrison I simply can't foresee I can do 600 bouts of aphresis donation
During the 'peak years' I donated almost once every 2 weeks, as I was always 'on call' by the blood bank as my platelet count is high (more than 350, sometimes approaching 400)
Many blood banks prefer to give the patients, - especially those severely weakened patients who had gone through regiments of chemotherapy to fight their blood/bone marrow cancers, - platelets from single donor rather than platelets collected from multiple donors
Thus far I have done platelet donation for more than 200 times, but due to the accumulation of scar tissues many of the blood veins in both of my arms have either collapsed, or shrunk
I still give blood, but whole blood, as my veins can no longer take the punishment from the aphresis process
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !