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Medicine Biotech

The Man With the Golden Blood 75

Posted by samzenpus from the rarest-of-the-rare dept.
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.
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The Man With the Golden Blood More

The Man With the Golden Blood

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  • Disappointing (Score:3)

    by kruach aum ( 1934852 ) on Sunday October 26, 2014 @02:10PM (#48235455)

    Thinking of actual gold-colored blood, I was expecting a human/arachnid hybrid. A spider-man, if you will.

    • Gold, as in the Golden rule - he who has the gold, rules.

      Which, interestingly enough, is pretty much the opposite of what is happening. Here you have this guy with an irreplaceable, limited resource. If he was in the US, he would have been man handled into a lawyers office and encouraged to be part of some corporation that could financially benefit from his genetic makeup. As it is (according TFA) he has to pay for taxi fair to the blood donation centers.

      Seems like a nice guy, stuck in a weird situation

    • Thinking of actual gold-colored blood, I was expecting a human/arachnid hybrid. A spider-man, if you will.

      Odd, I just thought they were Swiss. [sbs.com.au]

    • Why are you thinking of a human/ arachnid hybrid as having gold-coloured blood? Humans (and other vertebrates) have an oxygen-carrying compound called haemoglobin, which changes from a reddish colour when oxygenated to a bluish colour when deoxygenated. Arachnids (mites, spiders, scorpions) on the other hand use a compound called haemocyanin, which is bluish when oxygenated and colourless when deoxygenated. So a hybrid would have blood varying from a dark purple to a bluish colour depending on which side of

  • If you have a sufficiently rare blood type (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Sunday October 26, 2014 @02:28PM (#48235523)

    You get your own blood drive:
    http://www.archonstl.org/31/he... [archonstl.org]

  • R. H. Null (Score:3, Funny)

    by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Sunday October 26, 2014 @02:35PM (#48235585)
    'member him? he married Alexandria Bea Positive.

  • If big-pharma uses his blood to make a product does he get a piece of the action?
    Does he have a say in how it is used?

  • Q: what is the rarest blood type in the world? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday October 26, 2014 @02:45PM (#48235647)

    A: Krylon Technicolor type A
    Mike Shinoda [wikipedia.org] is the only known carrier.

  • rare or just not looked for? (Score:3)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Sunday October 26, 2014 @02:47PM (#48235659)
    I do find this interesting and would welcome links suitable for the lay person on the subject. But I'm not sure if these blood types are rare or just not something that is usually looked at, and I'm at a loss to understand why and how it was checked and found in this case. I'm used to the four major groupings (A, B, AB (both A and B) and O (neither A or B)) and the main RH factor that determines RH+ or RH-. But I seldom see any mention of special typing beyond this and I don't know if all blood is typed for these special extra factors and then that information is just withheld form patients or if the majority of tests are just for these major 8 categories. I suspect the latter. But that brings up the question of when and why blood is ever tested for all of these other "minor" typings, and just how minor are they. Occasionally we hear about someone who needs extremely rare blood, but the medical world seems to be content to classify me as B+. What does one do to rate these extra special tests?

    • Re: rare or just not looked for? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It is tested. If you donate once and you're a rare, they'll let you know.

      I'm actually a very common a+ with an unusual antigen (or more appropriately, lack of).

    • Re:rare or just not looked for? (Score:5, Informative)

      by dmr001 ( 103373 ) on Sunday October 26, 2014 @04:12PM (#48236111)
      In the US, when you donate blood, you'll be tested for ABO/Rh, and some of the more "minor" blood antigens (minor insofar as they are less frequently implicated in transfusion reactions and pregnancy-related alloimmunization. Most pregnant women will get, in addition to ABO and Rh-D testing, tested with an antibody screen for sensitivity to antigens from other alleles on the Rh locus, Rh-C and Rh-E. The antibody screen also tests for anti-Kell (anti-K, typically the worst of the more minor antigens; we're taught "Kell kills"), anti-Duffy (Fy(a) and Fy(b)), and sometimes anti-Kidd antigens, and once in a while you'll see anti-P, anti MNS, and anti-Lewis, which typically cause little or no harm. (See this Medscape article [medscape.com] for a few details.)

      The deal is if you are (say) an Rh positive fetus in an Rh negative mom who was previously exposed to another fetus's D antigens (and D is often the culprit) you can get your blood cells nailed by mom's previously-formed anti-D antibodies. You get anemia, jaundice as well, and the potential various bad side effects therefrom (heart damage, brain damage, swelling all over [google.com][may not be safe for work]). Similar havoc ensues with anti-K. Preventive therapy with RhoGAM is available to prevent anti-D disease; it's a soup of anti-D antibodies that scavenge any fetal Rh-D positive blood cells that happen to find their way into mom's circulation. It's produced from pooled human blood plasma, though even most Jehovah's Witnesses (since a 1974 church opinion) and Jews (because there's an escape hatch in kashrut for saving human life) find it acceptable for treatment in order to prevent this fairly terrifying surprise G-d had in store for a few unlucky babies.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's because in case of rare blood types, there are subtles anomalies in the standard blood typing process.
      These anomalies lead to more thorough explorations.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by meglon ( 1001833 )
      The actual article answers much of what you've questioned.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Fjandr ( 66656 )

      All donated blood is antigen-typed, because it can be fatal for a recipient if it is not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )
      There are enough blood donors around the world, and the testing on their blood is comprehensive enough, that one can make statistical conclusions about the prevalence of certain blood types in the general population. In other words - there's a large enough sample set (hundreds of millions, if not billions, or units tested to date, coming from tens or hundreds of millions of donors) that the (statistical) error bars are very small.

  • The military saves lives! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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!

    • The military saves lives! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I donate blood all the time, it's just not mine. They don't ask questions about where it comes from. Anymore.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SgtAaron ( 181674 )

      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 bu

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        iirc we just got the evening off for donating(Finland).

        and we stayed every 3rd weekend at the barracks, just cause, no reason. you apparently can sleep 16 hours a day and play the rest 8 hours tekken tag tournament and still eat two pizzas in a day.

      • I'm approaching the 5 gallon mark as well now and give every 2 months. For me it is something that I need to do to prevent illness as hemochromatosis [wikipedia.org] runs very strongly in both sides of my family. I figure I am doing my self some good and doing other people some good at the same time since if I actually were to develop hemochromatosis I would still need to get drained but the blood would be of no use. As an added benefit I am an universal donor with O- so it is always an in demand donation.

  • The Man With the Golden Blood (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday October 26, 2014 @04:52PM (#48236331)

    Worst Bond film ever.

  • Do Not Tell NJ Gov Christie (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Gov Christie find out he will set-up a Rh-null Travel Ban at Newark International to imprison all travelers from Europe.

  • All those researchers constantly after your blood. Yeesh *shudder*

  • I thought the photos (I'm assuming from a large blood center's processing facility) were pretty neat. My local blood bank doesn't have anything nearly so cool. (I donate platelets about 20 times a year, so I got one of the tech's I'm friendly with to give me a tour of the back room.)

  • Already detected but dismissed? (Score:3)

    by fygment ( 444210 ) on Monday October 27, 2014 @06:43AM (#48239219)

    wonder if a look back over historic records will find more of these that were dismissed as 'testing error' or 'typo'?

  • has appropriate procedures for dealing with this nullbloodtype exception. Just think of the buffer overflow attacks

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