Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.
Orson Scott

Comment preview: Functionally, it remains the same. Both the donor blood and the recipient blood have the same oxygen-carrying properties, so from a blood-draw standpoint it all just looks like blood. In most cases, the transfused blood is also a very small part of the b ....


Comment preview: The ore blood you transfuse, the higher the risk of transfusion reactions, especially as this large volume would have to come from a lot of sources and there is therefore a risk of each transfusion reacting with other transfusions. Transfusion reactions wo ....


Comment preview: It's a teeny tiny bit more subtle than that. Although the O- blood is called 'universal donor', there are occasionally surface proteins that can be sensitisers. Once exposed, the body can produce antibodies to any sensitiser it doesn't recognise, and thu ....


Comment preview: Reminds me of a somewhat similar incident: I work as an RN at a local hospital. One of my co-workers is a Jehova's Witness, and they believe a blood transfusion is sinful because it is consuming human body parts. When we give a blood transfusion to a patie ....


Comment preview: As in humans, it's significantly more complicated than we wish but there are general rules that can be applied. There is no "universal donor" breed, but greyhounds are noted for usually being negative for those antigens that cause the strongest adverse tra ....


Comment preview: Sort of. The type you hear about refers to a little tag on the outside of your red blood cells. This is genetic. If mom gives you an A and dad gives you an O, you have the genes for AO, which presents as type A, since O is the absence of any tag at all. Th ....


Comment preview: The title of the article is pretty sensationalist. When you say blood type, most people think of the major blood antigens to which we have pre-formed antibodies, but there are many other minor antigens to which we must be sensitized before we can generate ....


Comment preview: As ridiculous as their views may seem, Jehovah's witnesses have allowed us to gain more insight to blood loss and how humans cope with massive haemorrhage than would ever have been possible with trials on people without peculiar religious beliefs that woul ....


Comment preview: I know you have been corrected by many, but I thought I would respond as a plasma recipient. I have received two plasma transfusions, and from what I know, each transfusion (as a 135 lb female) requires donations from 1,000 donors. Each transfusion costs a ....


Comment preview: There was an Arab oil Sheikh that was in a coma and needed a blood transfusion to survive. He was AB+, so it was hard for doctors to find him a donor. Finally they found an old Jewish farmer that was listed as a blood donor with the same blood type. Howeve ....


Comment preview: You're engaged and it sounds like you're planning to have kids. Get all this figured out NOW, because just not talking about it is not a solution. How do you bring it up? Well, the article made you think about it, so something like, "Hey I saw this artic ....


Comment preview: It's abhorrent and based on misinterpreted scriptures. I know many who have died because of it. This is rather lengthy, but I could never word it better than this former Witness Elder discussing the [Blood Doctrine](http://exjehovahswitnessforum.yuku.com/t ....


Comment preview: Former JW here: When I was pregnant with my son I found out that it was quite possible that my son also had the same blood disorder like his father: Diamond Blackkfan Anemia. This is where the marrow does not produce red blood cells as it should. So when w ....


Comment preview: As a former Jehovah's Witness I would like to clear up a few things. Jehovah's Witnesses attempt to follow the Bible as closely as possible, and in Acts 15:29, there is found a passage that states "keep abstaining from blood." Now while this has to do with ....


Comment preview: Ultimately the question comes down to statistics. The overriding concern for bodies regulating the rules of blood donation is usually preventing new infections via blood transfusions, particularly of pathogens such as the HIV virus. Ideally one could achie ....


Comment preview: Have had this saved after answering this question a few times. Much better summary than I could write up with the time I have this morning. Edited for content. Credit to /u/Its_the_bees_knees **If you have any other specific questions after reading this ....


Comment preview: *This is Not about me, but my mom* When my parents were dating, (17-18? married by 20 I think, So this would have been sometime between 1980-1982). My mom was driving to my dads house to spend Christmas with his family. A Drunk driver hit my mom about a mi ....


Comment preview: > Do pardon my ignorance! Nothing to pardon :) JWs and Mormons have huge differences in teaching and I'm not qualified to speak on LDS doctrine but about the only similarity between the two religions is that they both preach door-to-door. A better disc ....


Comment preview: True that. I'm alive today because a doctor went against my Jehovah's Witness mothers directions and gave me a life-saving blood transfusion during an operation when I was 8 months old. I know my mother is glad that her only child is alive and has lived lo ....


Comment preview: It's for safety reasons. The tests that have to be done to check for HIV are too expensive to test every donation. You can be sorry for gay men who can't donate blood but you should be more sorry for people who die from contracting AIDS from blood transf ....


Comment preview: LiquidMonocle gave a pretty good explaination but I'm just going to expand a little bit more. First let me explain two basic terms- **Antigen**- The tag that identifies something. These antigens exist, to help our body distinguish molecules as "self" or "n ....


Comment preview: Short-term yes (maybe a few days at most), but eventually it will succumb to infection and toxicity of itself. Your body *needs* certain organs to survive: * Kidneys - without them the levels of toxic metabolites in your blood will kill you. * Liver - deto ....


Comment preview: Blood Banker here. No screening is 100% accurate. A lot of the patients who receive blood are immunocompromised therefore the smallest viral load can cause death. Depending on the region where you live, there is not a shortage of blood, so why take the ris ....


Comment preview: Hi I'm Xarxes, B+ assigned A- at birth. You cishaemo scum don't know how good you have it. After I was in a car crash I was rushed to hospital. They asked me my blood type and I told them it was B+. They started the transfusion and a little while later the ....


Comment preview: But if the government is going to be in the game of paying for medical procedures (whatever form that takes), then why pick and choose which medical procedures qualify? It seems like there is no way around the fact that this is injecting morality into pla ....