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From Discover magazine blog
Everyone is enjoying their summer run of HBO’s True Blood, yes? Our team of brooding vampires and charming Louisianans seem to be up to their usual high jinks. For those not into the show, it’s premised on the invention of TruBlood, a synthetic human blood substitute. A few years before the show begins, the Japanese have invented the stuff, and for the first time, vampires can subsist without killing people. They decide that now is the time to come out of the coffin—err, closet—and go mainstream.
But producing synthetic human blood has been a grail of sorts of the medical profession for decades. Imagine, no more public-service messages on the radio, begging for donations, no more blood donor trucks. If synthetic blood came into being, there would be no more searching for exact blood types, or fear of contracting blood-born diseases from transfusions. Heck, the entire blood-for-cookie market would collapse, and I mean that in the best way possible. And it may actually happen, possibly within the next few years.
Last year, scientists working for Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) published results in the journal Blood that showed they could produce functioning, oxygen-carrying red blood cells from stem cells. By selecting stem cells from embryos that produce O-negative blood (universal donor), ACT could theoretically produce synthetic blood that anyone could receive.
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1 comments:
I work for the American Red Cross Blood Services. While they are creating a blood substitute, it will never truly replace real blood for helping save lives. Whole Blood is made of more than just red blood cells, in blood there are also platelets and plasma. This is why they say on PSAs that one blood donation can save up to three lives. Those three components can possibly go to three different people. So while scientists can create a red blood cell, to create whole blood they would need to be able to create platelets and plasma too.
I've been told that the synthetic stuff can be used only for a brief period of time to sustain someone until that person can be taken to the hospital to get the real thing.
So sorry to say, live blood donors, blood mobiles and cookies are here to stay.
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