By donating blood, an Australian man is credited with saving the lives of over 2.4 million newborns. According to CNN, James Harrison donated blood nearly every week for 60 years until retiring in 2018. He was dubbed “the man with the golden arm” because of his gesture. Mr Harrison was able to save so many lives because his blood has special disease-fighting antibodies, which were utilized to make Anti-D, an injectable that aids in the fight against rhesus disease. Some pregnant women are affected with a syndrome in which antibodies in their blood begin attacking their unborn kids (known as rhesus D hemolytic disease or HDN). When a pregnant woman has rhesus-negative blood and the baby in her womb has rhesus, the disease develops.
Mr Harrison made 1,173 gifts throughout his 60 years
If the woman is sensitized to RhD-positive blood, generally from a prior pregnancy, her body may produce antibodies that target the baby’s “foreign” blood cells, which could be fatal. Multiple miscarriages, stillbirths, severe brain damage or fatal anaemia in neonates are all caused by HDN. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Mr Harrison made 1,173 gifts throughout his 60 years. The vaccine’s antibodies were isolated from his blood plasma.
In the 1960s, Australian geneticists identified the solution by injecting Rh-negative pregnant women with low doses of donor RhD immunoglobulin. According to the site, the antibodies neutralize the Rh-positive cells without causing harm to the body. Mr Harrison naturally produces an unusual combination of RhD-negative blood and Rh-positive antibodies, making him an ideal donor. According to Jemma Falkenmire of the Australian Red Cross Blood Donor Service, relatively few persons in the world have these antibodies in such high amounts. “His body produces a lot of them and when he donates his body produces more,” she went on to say. Mr Harrison began donating blood after receiving 13 units of blood transfusions as a result of severe chest surgery when he was 14 years old. He explained that this was his way of giving back after getting a life-saving transfusion himself.