Holy Shit, James Harrison!

In 1951, a 14-year-old Australian kid named James Harrison underwent major chest surgery. There were no major complications, and he ended up fine, but it struck him as incredible that he required almost 3.5 gallons of donated blood in order to survive the ordeal. From that moment, he made a personal vow to donate as much blood as he possibly could once he had fully recovered. As soon as he turned 18, he started giving plasma every 2-3 weeks.

Which I guess was exhausting? This pictogram is weird.

Once he had one or two donations under his belt, there was an interesting development. It turns out James Harrison's blood contained an antibody called Rho(D) immune globulin. That probably doesn't mean much to you, but to OB/GYNs and medical researches, finding this antibody in someone who was vowing to donate as much blood as humanly possible was like planting a garden and finding El Dorado in your backyard as a result.

I have a sudden urge to start gardening...in November.

To understand why, you need to know a bit about blood types and pregnancy complications. If a pregnant woman has a negative blood type but the fetus is positive, the mother's blood often treats the baby as a disease. The medical term for that situation is Rhesus Disease, but it's also known as "Bad News Bears." In the best case scenario, the baby is born anemic. More often than not, it could cause miscarriage or stillbirth.

Rhesus Disease used to be one of the most common causes of pregnancy and birth complications. But then James Harrison came around. When his fancy-pants antibody is given to pregnant women, it essentially hides the part of the baby's blood that causes the mother's body to treat it as a parasite. Thousands of babies were born and lived because Harrison was constantly donating. It wasn't long before researches developed RhoGAM, which is essentially a vaccine that protects at-risk pregnancies from Rhesus Disease.

James Harrison is still around and donating, and he's become a major voice for blood donation. He currently holds the world record for lifetime blood donations -- which, by now, is well over 1,000. It's estimated that his blood has saved over 2.4 million babies.

Well that's just ungrateful.

I don't usually get personal on this blog, but in this case I'm going to make an exception. My daughter is quite possibly alive today because of James Harrison. Her blood type is Rh positive and her mother's is Rh negative. My daughter is easily the single best thing that's ever happened to me. She's brought immeasurable happiness into my life, and I owe that happiness, in part, to James Harrison.

There is nothing like this.

Holy shit.




By the way, you ought to consider donating blood yourself. You've got a ton of it, and it's not like you're using it all. Might as well, right? The Red Cross is a good place to start, but a quick Google search for "donate blood" should show you what your options are.



James Harrison with two babies. Australian Red Cross.

"Muisca raft Legend of El Dorado Offerings of gold" by Andrew Bertram - World66. Licensed under CC BY-SA 1.0 via Commons

"Human-Male-White-Newborn-Baby-Crying" by Evan-Amos - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

Holy Shit, Chloroform!

Despite being pretty much obsolete for its main intended use, chloroform maintains a solid foothold in our collective cultural awareness. And you know why. The trope of the chloroform-soaked rag has been so thoroughly woven into the fabric of crime fiction that it's the first thing we think of when we plan imagine a kidnapping.

What? There are perfectly legitimate reasons to wear a balaclava in late September.

In fact, it's such an integral trope that most of us will never even think about chloroform in any other context. Admit it, when you saw the title of this post you thought it was going to be all about kidnapping, didn't you? Well, you're not entirely wrong, but if you look closer at the history of chloroform, you'll find yourself in one of those situations where the rug gets pulled out from under you.

The problem with our kidnapping imagery is that chloroform doesn't work that way. Well it does, but not nearly that fast. You can rest easy with the knowledge that, were a criminal to approach you with a chloroform-soaked rag, he would have to hold it up to your face for five to ten solid minutes before you became unconscious.

Which means this scene is just starting to get awkward.

So where did the "Instant KO" myth come from? This guy:

Believe it or not, not a kidnapper.

That's Sir James Young Simpson, a Scottish obstetrician known for innovating new equipment and treatments to help advance the medical field. Simpson had a couple of colleagues over one day and decided to do a little experiment with some chloroform he happened to have. To make a long story short, the gathering ended up being a bit of a rager. His two human guinea pigs got first loopy, then giddy, then unconscious.

Simpson was thrilled with this discovery, and just three days later chloroform entered the medical scene as an anesthetic. His excitement at the relative speed with which his friends passed out led him to exaggerate a bit, which led the general public to believe that chloroform could cause instant sleepytimes. From there, writers (and disappointed criminals) took the ball and ran with it, and a trope was born.

As for its medical use, chloroform lost a bit of favor when it turned out that 1 in every 3,000 patients dosed with the drug ended up dead. Safer methods arose, especially nitrous oxide, and chloroform dropped out of the real world, taking refuge in fiction. Today, it's mostly used in chemistry labs or as a solvent.

Which is way less exciting.

So remember, if someone jumps from an alley and forces chloroform into your face, you're probably just going to end up a little frightened and a little high. At least from the drug, I make no further guarantees about the criminal.

Holy shit.




"Chickamauga 2009, Chloroform" by Kevin King - Flickr: Chickamauga 2009, Chloroform. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

"Balaclava 3 hole black" by Tobias "ToMar" Maier. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Still image from Charmed, S2E7: "Give Me a Sign"

"Simpson James Young signature picture" by Henry Laing Gordon - Frontispiece of Sir James Young Simpson and Chloroform (1811-1870). Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

"Senior chemistry lab at Mother's International School, Delhi" by Prateek Karandikar - Own work. Licensed under GFDL via Wikimedia Commons

Holy Shit, Poison Ivy!

This weekend, I was mowing the lawn when I spotted a bushel of trifoliate weeds. Remembering the old adage, "Leaves of three, let it be (unless it's under your backyard tree)," I sprang into action. With gloved hands, I yanked the whole damn thing out of the ground, roots and all. Then I put it into a plastic bag and tossed it into the trash.

Alas, one of the leaflets brushed against my hand, spreading the urushiol onto the bare skin there. Then I wiped the sweat from my brow with the same spot on my arm. Now my arm has an infuriatingly itchy rash, my eyes are swollen and bumpy, my heart is a pit of black rage, and every fiber of my being is screaming in hatred of Toxicodendron radicans, more commonly known as poison ivy.

Or "Satan's Salad"

So we're going to talk about this little son-of-a-bitch weed. First and foremost, how it works. Poison ivy is one of many plants that produces urushiol, an oily substance that 85% of human immune systems treat like Genghis freaking Khan. If you're allergic, like most people are, your body will throw everything it has at the urushiol, and that's why I hate botanical world right now.

Once your dumbass pores absorb the oil (probably because you took a hot shower, which opens them), you are very unlikely to be contagious. The blisters are full of water and pus, but not poison ivy juice. Any clothing you have that came into contact with it, on the other hand, is highly contagious and should be washed as soon as possible. Or burned in a cathartic bonfire. Or nuked from orbit. Your choice, really.

From there, depending on the severity, you either wait it out, take some antihistamines, apply some itch cream, or take steroids to unleash the hidden powers of your manly immune system or something (citation needed). I'm on the steroids route.

Artist's rendition

Now here's the weird stuff. You knew it was coming. First of all, humans are the only animal we know of that is allergic to poison ivy. Even chimps, who share a ludicrous amount of DNA with us, are completely immune.

In fact, one of the preferred (or at least entertaining) methods of getting rid of an infestation is your yard is to hire a goat. They love the stuff. They'll eat it all up for you without getting so much as a stomachache.

I knew there was a reason I don't trust them. I could see it in their eldritch eyes.

The other big weird point: urushiol is not restricted to poison ivy. Of course, most people know that poison oak and poison sumac work the same way. That's true enough. There's also a tree found in Asia called the Asian lacquer tree that has it. The Japanese call it the urushi. I respect you enough as a reader to assume you can make that connection. That's not too weird, though, is it? You were expecting more.

I guess I'll have to throw in some mangoes.

I'm generous like that

Mango leaves and stems (and possibly also skins) have the same allergenic compound as poison ivy, and are, in fact, the number one cause of plant-based rashes in places where mangoes are cultivated, like Hawaii.

The moral of this story is fuck mangoes, fuck urushiol, and most of all, fuck poison ivy.

So holy shit, or whatever. I'm gonna go take some more Benadryl.

Holy Shit, HIV.

The second I wrote the title of this post, I realized that I didn't want to make this topic funny. I can write about all kinds of promising research into a cure for HIV/AIDS. I can write about how much progress has been made in removing the stigma from both the virus and the gay community. But instead, I'll just tell you to look at this graph:

That's what HIV/AIDS has done to sub-Saharan Africa. It's effects, particularly in the late '80s, were downright apocalyptic. Young people are most susceptible. In the coldest possible terms, that means countries with major AIDS epidemics are deprived of a taxable work force. Which means they just can't afford to fix the problem.

Progress has been made, but we're a long, long way from recovering fully as a species from what HIV/AIDS has wrought. To this day, there are countries where one in four people are HIV positive. I honestly don't have the stomach to say much more than that. Maybe I'll revisit more specific elements later.

Holy shit.

Holy Shit, Delta 32!

C-C Chemokine Receptor Type 5, or CCR5, is a protein in your white blood cells. We don't know its exact function, but we're pretty sure it interacts with T cells, and it may play a key role in inflammations that result from infection. All in all, it's a pretty standard white blood cell protein. That's what HIV counts on.

Some forms of HIV use CCR5 as their point of entry into your immune system. When that happens, shit gets bad. That's why most early drugs given to HIV positive people target CCR5. It's more or less the main point of entry for the AIDS virus.

It's like that drainage grate at Helm's Deep. Only, you know, AIDS.

Now let's take a quick two and a half thousand year trip to the past and take a look at Ancient Athens. In 430 BC, the second year of the Peloponnesian War, Athens was struck with a massive, horrific plague that wiped out a fourth of its population. It was at this point in human history when CCR5 started to change. Medicine back then consisted mainly of blood-letting, the type of thing that lands you in a psyche ward nowadays. Back then you paid people to do it to you.

As a result, natural selection weeded out a lot of people via disease. Many survived, of course. Some of them had a bizarre natural resistance, which we now call CCR5-Δ32, or Delta 32. It's a gene mutation. A tiny variation in your genetic makeup that essentially deletes a certain segment of the CCR5 protein. As smallpox and various other diseases spread across Europe, the Delta 32 mutation became more common in the survivors, conferring various immunities to a lucky minority.

Alas, this did not include immunity to ludicrous superstitious violence.

Today, Delta 32 is found in about 10-15% of European-descended humans. The segment of CCR5 that it deletes turns out to be a chief cause of all kinds of problems. That includes the aforementioned HIV. I suppose you can see what I'm getting at. If you are of European descent, there is as much as a 15% chance that you are, if not immune, then highly resistant to the AIDS virus.

That's evolution at work. Think of the untold thousands of people who had to die so that this mutation could become as prevalent as it is. Think of how many people would have to suffer today for it to become a common feature in human beings. This relatively new strength, like all the strengths we enjoy as a species, came at a massive cost over thousands of years.

Luckily, we've gotten pretty good at tinkering with evolution since then. Rather than opening our veins and hoping all the sick pours out with our blood, we use real science to develop real medicine that really works. And the discovery of the Delta 32 mutation is a boon for medicine. We don't know how, and we don't know for sure it'll work, but it's very possible that this natural resistance might hold the key to curing HIV, a disease that only twenty years ago was synonymous with a death sentence.

Holy shit.