According to a story from The Independent, the 60 years of blood donations from a single man may be directly responsible for saving the lives of 2.4 million babies. The man is question is James Harrison, but he has also been dubbed “the man with the golden arm.” A citizens of Australia, James is 81 years old now and has donated blood around 1,100 times since he turned 21.
That is an impressive number of times for anyone to donate, but the sheer number of times he donated is not the only reason he has gained fame. James is one of fifty people in the country whose blood contains a specific type of antibody that had unique disease fighting properties. Doctors first discovered that his blood had the rare antibody when he had to get a lung removed at age 14. It is unclear why he has this unusual blood, but it could have been the result of transfusions received during the procedure.
These antibodies were used in order to create an injection that treats rhesus disease, or Rh disease. This is a disease that can cause serious harm or even death to babies that are still developing in their mothers. Through the duration of pregnancy, it is possible for a small amount of the fetus’s blood to enter the mother’s blood stream. This causes the mother to develop antibodies against the Rh factor in the fetus’s blood. It is then possible for these antibodies to get passed to the fetus. Rh disease almost always occurs during the second or subsequent pregnancies in women who have Rh negative blood who conceive a child that is Rh positive. To learn more about Rh disease, click here.
Blood from James has undeniably had a major impact, as every injection dosage used up to 2015 to treat Rh disease in Australia used antibodies from it. He likes to say that his blood helped increase the country’s population by a couple of million people. Now that he is 81, he is past the age at which it is considered safe for someone to donate blood.
While there are others in the country who have the rare antibodies, whether any of them will commit to donating in the same way that James did has yet to be seen.
