7 ms·

I wonder what other stuff is being unwittingly transferred during standard blood transfusions. I've seen some interesting research about the "signalling" power

I wonder what other stuff is being unwittingly transferred during standard blood transfusions. I've seen some interesting research about the "signalling" power of blood from both older and younger donors, with the "young blood" causing a slow down of senescence in cells, and the "old blood" causing a speed-up in senescence. Any time you take biological material out of other human beings and put them in a different body, it seems like you are introducing a lot more uncertainty and risk than when you inject a person with a comparatively "simple" small-molecule drug.

axus 3y ago
My mom developed an allergy to eggs after a blood transfusion. She long regretted never being able to eat another chocolate eclair.
- eigenvalue 3y ago
  That’s nuts. Seems like researchers should look really closely at weird side effects of blood transfusions since these are effectively “natural experiments” that would be impossible or unethical to run normally.
  - EdwardDiego 3y ago
    They do. These incidences are rare, but documented, and researched. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-peanut-allergy-comes-from-a-blood-transfusion/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-peanut-aller... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562830/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562830/ It looks like the allergy isn't permanent though.
  - kccqzy 3y ago
    Generally, I think if a patient needs blood transfusions there's a bigger and more immediate life-and-death problem right there. I think allergies would be preferable to death. Is my understanding correct? I hope blood transfusion hasn't become a routine procedure these days.
    - fastball 3y ago
      I don't think GC was suggesting that we stop blood transfusions, but rather that we do better tracking to improve our understanding in a way that normally would be unethical (if not for the fact that, as you say, blood transfusions are a life-saving intervention).
      - eigenvalue 3y ago
        Yes exactly.
    - bobsmooth 3y ago
      You get a blood transfusion for any major surgery.
      - Arrath 3y ago
        Makes me wonder if there is any possibility to give blood in the lead-up to your surgery, such that you're transfused with your own blood?
        blendergeek 3y ago
        It's called an autotransfusion and it's a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotransfusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotransfusion
      - mhaberl 3y ago
        You get it IF there is a need for it, not always. I had an open heart surgery and didn't get a blood transfusion.
      - theshackleford 3y ago
        No.
      - TechnicalVault 3y ago
        Before the 1990's but not anymore. The contaminated blood scandal in the United Kingdom (https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/ https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/) and a lot of papers showing benefits to avoiding blood loss in the first place have changed practices. We haven't eliminated the use of allogeneic blood transfusions but they're indicated a lot less than they used to be.
  - RajT88 3y ago
    Well, the boffins figured out somehow that if you get a blood transfusion from an Opossum you become immune to all snake venom for a while. (Seems wikipedia removed this factoid now... and other sources state "most" snake venom) I assume they tested on animals, not humans.
    - bglazer 3y ago
      Can you provide a source? That sounds unlikely
      - RajT88 3y ago
        Here is something scholarly: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5315628/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5315628/ I cannot find anything now talking about a blood transfusion (I probably read about it 10 years back). It more or less jives with the scholarly article in that "immunogenic effects are reported". A slightly less dry read: https://www.grunge.com/1105496/how-an-opossum-could-be-the-reason-you-survive-a-snakebite/ https://www.grunge.com/1105496/how-an-opossum-could-be-the-r...
  - d1sxeyes 3y ago
    No, eggs, not nuts. I'll see myself out.
  - lynx23 3y ago
    As someone who has been deliberately used at a young age by a doctor for a medical experiment, I can tell you this is how human experiments are done these days. Take someone with condition X which is life threatening, and suddenly you can do all your unethical stuff without having to be afraid of consequences. You just have to crank up the severity and you suddenly are free to do whatever you want.
    - seunosewa 3y ago
      Can you sue?
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  If your mom’s still around let her know about vegan egg alternatives!
  - syndicatedjelly 3y ago
    Vegan egg tastes like butts
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    I am not a vegan, but I eat a lot of vegetables, most vegetables, if prepared correctly are delicious, there are a lot of traditional dishes in every cuisine in the world that take absolutely no animal products on their preparation and have a wonderful taste and aroma. I see no reason to eat those franken-foods just because you're a vegan, a lot of them have strange additives to make them taste and look like animal stuff, it is simply not worth the risk to eat them IMHO. Of course, this is a personal view point.
    - Cpoll 3y ago
      > I see no reason to eat those franken-foods just because you're a vegan, a lot of them have strange additives to make them taste and look like animal stuff, it is simply not worth the risk to eat them IMHO. "Just Egg" is mung bean and canola oil. You can DIY it for cheaper, it's like buying pancake mix. There's always a few strange additives for these sorts of products (improve shelf life, anti-caking, emulsion, whatever), but that's not a vegan-specific thing.
      - timschmidt 3y ago
        Seed oils like canola aren't great for health. They're fairly new to the food stream (only widely available since about 1900), heavily processed, and chock full of compounds the plant was making to protect it's seeds, many of which cause inflammation and other negative health effects. Olive oil, coconut oil, and animal fats have all been in use longer, and seem to be better for us. Avocado oil also seems to be decent, though it can be challenging to find quality unadulterated oils of any kind.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  You are supposed to declare your issues before (or at least after) you give blood. Kinda messed up that whoever donated that blood didn't report it. Then again, I'm glad the blood was available...
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    We can't conclude that the donor had an egg allergy. The immune system is complicated as hell, it could be the case that he had some weird protein circulating on his blood that was recognized by her immune system, and by chance this protein was structurally close enough to some egg protein that now eggs trigger an immune response on her.
    - scythe 3y ago
      Worth noting that the most prevalent protein in blood is albumin, and the major protein in eggs is, yep, albumin.
      - hirvi74 3y ago
        Are you implying there is a connection? Even if it's just for nonsense, I'd love to read it. Because other prevalent commonalities, you could make the same argument about water, for example.
    - twothamendment 3y ago
      "The immune system is complicated as hell." You got that right! My wife used to eat a banana every day. Then something in her flipped and she reacts as if she is allergic to bananas and the rest of the world - not exaggerating. She can eat a very small number of foods and has to avoid most people because of smells. It isn't allergies it is - you guessed it - her immune system. If we could just flip it back to "normal"...
      - mips_r4300i 3y ago
        Same thing happened to me. I was eating bananas, beef, coffee, etc. then I got some sort of viral infection. My thyroid became inflamed for a couple months. No doctor was able to find anything wrong with me. Little did I know, having postviral sequelae causes my immune system to start hating many things I used to eat. A food blood sensitive test showed that bananas, beef, coffee were what set my immune system off the most. I was told it was gut permeability causing food particles to leak into the blood stream causing the immune response. So the fix has been to stop eating those, let the gut heal, and over time I've been able to eat those foods in moderation years later.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  Eggs or chicken eggs? Could always use duck eggs.
- darkclouds 3y ago
  [dead]
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  Killjoy note that the allergy may well be unrelated to the transfusion, despite occurring after it.
  - tim333 3y ago
    Though it seems quite plausible something in the blood caused an immune reaction that then also gets set of by egg protein.
    - BurningFrog 3y ago
      FWIW, ChatGPT 3.5 says: "The development of a new food allergy, such as an allergy to eggs, as a direct result of a blood transfusion is extremely rare and not a well-documented phenomenon. Food allergies are typically triggered by exposure to specific allergenic proteins found in foods, and blood transfusions do not typically involve the introduction of food proteins."
      - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        ChatGPT 3.5 is known to make mistakes, hallucinate, and not care about the factuality of its responses. Given this, a comment which does nothing but quote chatGPT 3.5 verbatim can do more harm than not commenting at all, especially on health matters, where such qualities can constitute outright recklessness. If you want to share your own thoughts, though, I know I'd welcome them. At least humans have a greater than 0% chance of caring about the well-being of humans.
        tim333 3y ago
        Dunno but it seems not unheard of see eg. Peanut and fish allergy due to platelet transfusion in a child https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562830/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562830/
lostlogin 3y ago
> I've seen some interesting research about the "signalling" power of blood from both older and younger donors, with the "young blood" causing a slow down of senescence in cells Maybe the Silicon Valley ‘blood boy’ can be brought to market.
- aeternum 3y ago
  I believe Ambrosia was the (real) startup that was the inspiration for that story arc. Looks like they're still around but have pivoted to boring wearables and of course AI. A supposed win for the FDA, but perhaps a loss to humanity since there does seem to be evidence that the idea actually worked.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    For once, a pivot to AI is a bit of a relief...
q1w2 3y ago
Not only blood transfusions, but ligament/tendon transplants from cadavers are extremely common for people who tear their ACL. It would be a disaster if this type of surgery also transmitted some prior/protein misfolding disease decades later. Millions would be impacted. The practice stared in the 1980s, but really only became popular in the early 2000s with the boom in arthroscopic surgery standardization. Hopefully the blood-brain barrier prevents this.
- eigenvalue 3y ago
  Oh man, I bet you’re right and enough time hasn’t gone by to see the fallout from it! I bet rich people will start bidding up tendons and ligaments from younger cadavers (probably mostly motorcycle accident victims). Although given that so many of those have toxoplasmosis, maybe that’s also not great…
  - fbdab103 3y ago
    One estimate says that 30-50% of all human beings have toxoplasmosis, so I would put that as pretty low on the list of risks. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3963851/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3963851/
- coffeebeqn 3y ago
  Could they test the donor first for these proteins or whatever is causing it?
  - PeterisP 3y ago
    We probably could, but only after we'd figure out what exactly is causing it.
- ikrenji 3y ago
  those tissues are unlikely to carry prions. prions are concentrated in the brain.
  - 3y ago
selcuka 3y ago
> I've seen some interesting research about [...] the "young blood" causing a slow down of senescence in cells, This is excellent material for the conspiracy theorists.
- tim333 3y ago
  Yeah see https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/14/no-peter-thiel-is-not-harvesting-the-blood-of-the-young/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/14/no-peter-thiel-is-not-harv...
Solvency 3y ago
[flagged]
palijer 3y ago
>Any time you take biological material out of other human beings and put them in a different body, it seems like you are introducing a lot more uncertainty and risk But this always had to be weighed against the risks of not getting the transfusion. Typically the consequences of not getting a transfusion when it is medically indicated is pretty severe. We don't really need to worry about unlikely not-yet-understood edge cases that happen years later from procedures we've done millions of times. We gotta gotta about blood loss.
- abirch 3y ago
  Yes, usually if you need a blood transfusion there are bigger issues. Please remember to ask your doctor about autologous transfusion, where you bank your own blood before a planned procedure.
- TechnicalVault 3y ago
  Depends what the indication is, for some kinds of trauma the evidence is that transfusions are what will keep the patient alive, e.g. you're dumping pints on the table and it's likely to be contaminated, you can't salvage and reinfuse. However, for pre-planned surgery the evidence suggests avoiding blood loss where you can is the best practice. Studies have also shown that pre-deposit autologous blood donation before surgery is of uncertain benefit so it tends to be contra-indicated in the UK at least. Before we understood the risks we used to do transfusions a lot more frequently than we do now and this led to a generation of anaesthetists who would basically treat with blood transfusion at the slightest sign of low blood count. More recent studies have suggested that a lower blood count can be tolerated than was previously realised and that you can often get away with guaranteed pathogen free (and much cheaper) volume expanders. There has also been developments in cell salvage to reinfuse suctioned blood and methods to avoid blood loss in the first place. Medical practice has also changed to reflect this and the changed evidence base, especially given the relative costs (hospital managers love to save money). Hip and knee replacement surgery used to use blood routinely and were almost always done under general anaesthetic, but given we now want to get patients out within a day or two post surgery we do the surgery under spinal block and minimise blood loss as much as we can. tldr; We still need transfusions for some things but we should be using them less than we do.
bregma 3y ago
> I wonder what other stuff is being unwittingly transferred during standard blood transfusions. Back in the early 1990s my wife worked in epidemiology studies at the national blood agency in our country. There was a lot of work to be done since at the time being a hemophiliac and receiving blood products meant a good chance of dying from AIDS or non-A non-B hepatitis (now known as Hep C). The agency did not test each and every donation for the presence of these pathogens because the available inexpensive tests had a poor success rate (high false positive) and the better tests were prohibitively expensive and the policy was "if we destroyed any suspected donations we'd have to destroy all of them". The idea of a screening questionnaire was floated but because most sexually transmissible diseases are also transmissible through blood, the question "Have you ever had sex?" would eliminate quite a few donations. They were a tough time for the blood agency. Thankfully technology has progressed and testing for known pathogens in a blood sample is rapid and inexpensive. Testing for unknown pathogens is still a challenge.
- mauvehaus 3y ago
  If you want to read more about this history in the US, I cannot recommend And the Band Played On highly enough. The book deals with the early history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and touches on the issues related to blood donations and transfusions given the technical limitations at the time. It's also a crushingly depressing book.
  - eigenvalue 3y ago
    Yeah, the blood bank companies end up looking really evil in that. If you were a hemophiliac in the early 80s, you were playing Russian roulette constantly.
- jonp888 3y ago
  Until 2023 male blood donors in Germany were still asked "have you had sex with a man in the last 4 months?" As an exclusion criterium. Donors who lived in Britain in the 90's are still banned due to the Lack of a Test which can identify 'Mad Cow Disease'.
seesawtron 3y ago
There is no evidence of actual transfer. It is just a possibile hypothesis.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> it seems like you are introducing a lot more uncertainty and risk Of course. What matters though isn't the absolute risk, it's whether such treatments provide enough benefits to outweigh those risks. Not dying outweighs pretty much everything.

axus 3y ago

My mom developed an allergy to eggs after a blood transfusion. She long regretted never being able to eat another chocolate eclair.

eigenvalue 3y ago
That’s nuts. Seems like researchers should look really closely at weird side effects of blood transfusions since these are effectively “natural experiments” that would be impossible or unethical to run normally.
- EdwardDiego 3y ago
  They do. These incidences are rare, but documented, and researched. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-peanut-allergy-comes-from-a-blood-transfusion/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-peanut-aller... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562830/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562830/ It looks like the allergy isn't permanent though.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  Generally, I think if a patient needs blood transfusions there's a bigger and more immediate life-and-death problem right there. I think allergies would be preferable to death. Is my understanding correct? I hope blood transfusion hasn't become a routine procedure these days.
  - fastball 3y ago
    I don't think GC was suggesting that we stop blood transfusions, but rather that we do better tracking to improve our understanding in a way that normally would be unethical (if not for the fact that, as you say, blood transfusions are a life-saving intervention).
    - eigenvalue 3y ago
      Yes exactly.
  - bobsmooth 3y ago
    You get a blood transfusion for any major surgery.
    - Arrath 3y ago
      Makes me wonder if there is any possibility to give blood in the lead-up to your surgery, such that you're transfused with your own blood?
      - blendergeek 3y ago
        It's called an autotransfusion and it's a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotransfusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotransfusion
    - mhaberl 3y ago
      You get it IF there is a need for it, not always. I had an open heart surgery and didn't get a blood transfusion.
    - theshackleford 3y ago
      No.
    - TechnicalVault 3y ago
      Before the 1990's but not anymore. The contaminated blood scandal in the United Kingdom (https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/ https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/) and a lot of papers showing benefits to avoiding blood loss in the first place have changed practices. We haven't eliminated the use of allogeneic blood transfusions but they're indicated a lot less than they used to be.
- RajT88 3y ago
  Well, the boffins figured out somehow that if you get a blood transfusion from an Opossum you become immune to all snake venom for a while. (Seems wikipedia removed this factoid now... and other sources state "most" snake venom) I assume they tested on animals, not humans.
  - bglazer 3y ago
    Can you provide a source? That sounds unlikely
    - RajT88 3y ago
      Here is something scholarly: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5315628/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5315628/ I cannot find anything now talking about a blood transfusion (I probably read about it 10 years back). It more or less jives with the scholarly article in that "immunogenic effects are reported". A slightly less dry read: https://www.grunge.com/1105496/how-an-opossum-could-be-the-reason-you-survive-a-snakebite/ https://www.grunge.com/1105496/how-an-opossum-could-be-the-r...
- d1sxeyes 3y ago
  No, eggs, not nuts. I'll see myself out.
- lynx23 3y ago
  As someone who has been deliberately used at a young age by a doctor for a medical experiment, I can tell you this is how human experiments are done these days. Take someone with condition X which is life threatening, and suddenly you can do all your unethical stuff without having to be afraid of consequences. You just have to crank up the severity and you suddenly are free to do whatever you want.
  - seunosewa 3y ago
    Can you sue?
teaearlgraycold 3y ago
If your mom’s still around let her know about vegan egg alternatives!
- syndicatedjelly 3y ago
  Vegan egg tastes like butts
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- elzbardico 3y ago
  I am not a vegan, but I eat a lot of vegetables, most vegetables, if prepared correctly are delicious, there are a lot of traditional dishes in every cuisine in the world that take absolutely no animal products on their preparation and have a wonderful taste and aroma. I see no reason to eat those franken-foods just because you're a vegan, a lot of them have strange additives to make them taste and look like animal stuff, it is simply not worth the risk to eat them IMHO. Of course, this is a personal view point.
  - Cpoll 3y ago
    > I see no reason to eat those franken-foods just because you're a vegan, a lot of them have strange additives to make them taste and look like animal stuff, it is simply not worth the risk to eat them IMHO. "Just Egg" is mung bean and canola oil. You can DIY it for cheaper, it's like buying pancake mix. There's always a few strange additives for these sorts of products (improve shelf life, anti-caking, emulsion, whatever), but that's not a vegan-specific thing.
    - timschmidt 3y ago
      Seed oils like canola aren't great for health. They're fairly new to the food stream (only widely available since about 1900), heavily processed, and chock full of compounds the plant was making to protect it's seeds, many of which cause inflammation and other negative health effects. Olive oil, coconut oil, and animal fats have all been in use longer, and seem to be better for us. Avocado oil also seems to be decent, though it can be challenging to find quality unadulterated oils of any kind.
withinboredom 3y ago
You are supposed to declare your issues before (or at least after) you give blood. Kinda messed up that whoever donated that blood didn't report it. Then again, I'm glad the blood was available...
- elzbardico 3y ago
  We can't conclude that the donor had an egg allergy. The immune system is complicated as hell, it could be the case that he had some weird protein circulating on his blood that was recognized by her immune system, and by chance this protein was structurally close enough to some egg protein that now eggs trigger an immune response on her.
  - scythe 3y ago
    Worth noting that the most prevalent protein in blood is albumin, and the major protein in eggs is, yep, albumin.
    - hirvi74 3y ago
      Are you implying there is a connection? Even if it's just for nonsense, I'd love to read it. Because other prevalent commonalities, you could make the same argument about water, for example.
  - twothamendment 3y ago
    "The immune system is complicated as hell." You got that right! My wife used to eat a banana every day. Then something in her flipped and she reacts as if she is allergic to bananas and the rest of the world - not exaggerating. She can eat a very small number of foods and has to avoid most people because of smells. It isn't allergies it is - you guessed it - her immune system. If we could just flip it back to "normal"...
    - mips_r4300i 3y ago
      Same thing happened to me. I was eating bananas, beef, coffee, etc. then I got some sort of viral infection. My thyroid became inflamed for a couple months. No doctor was able to find anything wrong with me. Little did I know, having postviral sequelae causes my immune system to start hating many things I used to eat. A food blood sensitive test showed that bananas, beef, coffee were what set my immune system off the most. I was told it was gut permeability causing food particles to leak into the blood stream causing the immune response. So the fix has been to stop eating those, let the gut heal, and over time I've been able to eat those foods in moderation years later.
dehrmann 3y ago
Eggs or chicken eggs? Could always use duck eggs.
darkclouds 3y ago
[dead]
BurningFrog 3y ago
Killjoy note that the allergy may well be unrelated to the transfusion, despite occurring after it.
- tim333 3y ago
  Though it seems quite plausible something in the blood caused an immune reaction that then also gets set of by egg protein.
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    FWIW, ChatGPT 3.5 says: "The development of a new food allergy, such as an allergy to eggs, as a direct result of a blood transfusion is extremely rare and not a well-documented phenomenon. Food allergies are typically triggered by exposure to specific allergenic proteins found in foods, and blood transfusions do not typically involve the introduction of food proteins."
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      ChatGPT 3.5 is known to make mistakes, hallucinate, and not care about the factuality of its responses. Given this, a comment which does nothing but quote chatGPT 3.5 verbatim can do more harm than not commenting at all, especially on health matters, where such qualities can constitute outright recklessness. If you want to share your own thoughts, though, I know I'd welcome them. At least humans have a greater than 0% chance of caring about the well-being of humans.
      - tim333 3y ago
        Dunno but it seems not unheard of see eg. Peanut and fish allergy due to platelet transfusion in a child https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562830/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562830/

lostlogin 3y ago

> I've seen some interesting research about the "signalling" power of blood from both older and younger donors, with the "young blood" causing a slow down of senescence in cells Maybe the Silicon Valley ‘blood boy’ can be brought to market.

aeternum 3y ago
I believe Ambrosia was the (real) startup that was the inspiration for that story arc. Looks like they're still around but have pivoted to boring wearables and of course AI. A supposed win for the FDA, but perhaps a loss to humanity since there does seem to be evidence that the idea actually worked.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rsynnott 3y ago
  For once, a pivot to AI is a bit of a relief...

q1w2 3y ago

Not only blood transfusions, but ligament/tendon transplants from cadavers are extremely common for people who tear their ACL. It would be a disaster if this type of surgery also transmitted some prior/protein misfolding disease decades later. Millions would be impacted. The practice stared in the 1980s, but really only became popular in the early 2000s with the boom in arthroscopic surgery standardization. Hopefully the blood-brain barrier prevents this.

eigenvalue 3y ago
Oh man, I bet you’re right and enough time hasn’t gone by to see the fallout from it! I bet rich people will start bidding up tendons and ligaments from younger cadavers (probably mostly motorcycle accident victims). Although given that so many of those have toxoplasmosis, maybe that’s also not great…
- fbdab103 3y ago
  One estimate says that 30-50% of all human beings have toxoplasmosis, so I would put that as pretty low on the list of risks. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3963851/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3963851/
coffeebeqn 3y ago
Could they test the donor first for these proteins or whatever is causing it?
- PeterisP 3y ago
  We probably could, but only after we'd figure out what exactly is causing it.
ikrenji 3y ago
those tissues are unlikely to carry prions. prions are concentrated in the brain.
- 3y ago

selcuka 3y ago

> I've seen some interesting research about [...] the "young blood" causing a slow down of senescence in cells, This is excellent material for the conspiracy theorists.

tim333 3y ago
Yeah see https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/14/no-peter-thiel-is-not-harvesting-the-blood-of-the-young/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/14/no-peter-thiel-is-not-harv...

Solvency 3y ago

[flagged]

palijer 3y ago

>Any time you take biological material out of other human beings and put them in a different body, it seems like you are introducing a lot more uncertainty and risk But this always had to be weighed against the risks of not getting the transfusion. Typically the consequences of not getting a transfusion when it is medically indicated is pretty severe. We don't really need to worry about unlikely not-yet-understood edge cases that happen years later from procedures we've done millions of times. We gotta gotta about blood loss.

abirch 3y ago
Yes, usually if you need a blood transfusion there are bigger issues. Please remember to ask your doctor about autologous transfusion, where you bank your own blood before a planned procedure.
TechnicalVault 3y ago
Depends what the indication is, for some kinds of trauma the evidence is that transfusions are what will keep the patient alive, e.g. you're dumping pints on the table and it's likely to be contaminated, you can't salvage and reinfuse. However, for pre-planned surgery the evidence suggests avoiding blood loss where you can is the best practice. Studies have also shown that pre-deposit autologous blood donation before surgery is of uncertain benefit so it tends to be contra-indicated in the UK at least. Before we understood the risks we used to do transfusions a lot more frequently than we do now and this led to a generation of anaesthetists who would basically treat with blood transfusion at the slightest sign of low blood count. More recent studies have suggested that a lower blood count can be tolerated than was previously realised and that you can often get away with guaranteed pathogen free (and much cheaper) volume expanders. There has also been developments in cell salvage to reinfuse suctioned blood and methods to avoid blood loss in the first place. Medical practice has also changed to reflect this and the changed evidence base, especially given the relative costs (hospital managers love to save money). Hip and knee replacement surgery used to use blood routinely and were almost always done under general anaesthetic, but given we now want to get patients out within a day or two post surgery we do the surgery under spinal block and minimise blood loss as much as we can. tldr; We still need transfusions for some things but we should be using them less than we do.

bregma 3y ago

> I wonder what other stuff is being unwittingly transferred during standard blood transfusions. Back in the early 1990s my wife worked in epidemiology studies at the national blood agency in our country. There was a lot of work to be done since at the time being a hemophiliac and receiving blood products meant a good chance of dying from AIDS or non-A non-B hepatitis (now known as Hep C). The agency did not test each and every donation for the presence of these pathogens because the available inexpensive tests had a poor success rate (high false positive) and the better tests were prohibitively expensive and the policy was "if we destroyed any suspected donations we'd have to destroy all of them". The idea of a screening questionnaire was floated but because most sexually transmissible diseases are also transmissible through blood, the question "Have you ever had sex?" would eliminate quite a few donations. They were a tough time for the blood agency. Thankfully technology has progressed and testing for known pathogens in a blood sample is rapid and inexpensive. Testing for unknown pathogens is still a challenge.

mauvehaus 3y ago
If you want to read more about this history in the US, I cannot recommend And the Band Played On highly enough. The book deals with the early history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and touches on the issues related to blood donations and transfusions given the technical limitations at the time. It's also a crushingly depressing book.
- eigenvalue 3y ago
  Yeah, the blood bank companies end up looking really evil in that. If you were a hemophiliac in the early 80s, you were playing Russian roulette constantly.
jonp888 3y ago
Until 2023 male blood donors in Germany were still asked "have you had sex with a man in the last 4 months?" As an exclusion criterium. Donors who lived in Britain in the 90's are still banned due to the Lack of a Test which can identify 'Mad Cow Disease'.

seesawtron 3y ago

There is no evidence of actual transfer. It is just a possibile hypothesis.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> it seems like you are introducing a lot more uncertainty and risk Of course. What matters though isn't the absolute risk, it's whether such treatments provide enough benefits to outweigh those risks. Not dying outweighs pretty much everything.