April 9, 2015 • 60 mins
Blood types have one of the more interesting backstories in medical history. But as much as we've figured out about them and how they work, we still don't know much about why we even have different blood types. Listen in for a truly fascinating look at your most essential bodily fluid.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry is
in a certain kind of mood today. She's making jokes
and stuff talking. Yeah, she made a joke that would
(00:22):
have been great for the show, and I was like, well,
look at you. And then she was like, oh, I
didn't say you could use that joke. It's her man,
she's got her spinning bow tie on the day. I'm
gonna say the joke. Jerry said that her blood type
was a positive, which she thought was the most optimistic
of blood types. It doesn't even make sense, Sure it does,
that doesn't She's a positive person. Oh, I see. I
(00:42):
think of a positive is like a plus. So like
you were the star stum. Yeah, the star student of
the blood type. That makes sense. Though. That's not a
bad joke, Jerry know that. I understand. It's the first
joke she's given us in seven years. Way to go, Jeers,
that's gonna be a trivia question. You're down the roads
just knocking up with Jerry's one joke. How are you, sir?
(01:05):
I'm doing good. I'm feeling a positive myself. I'm feeling
oh negative. Wow, this joke just keep I don't even
know my blood type. I don't know mine neither. Is
that crazy? Yeah, that's great. And I've never had to
I mean, I've given blood IVY, but I don't. I don't.
I've never received blood. Get the records. Don't they test
(01:29):
your blood type? I guess, but I don't. Ever, I
don't know. It should be on your donor card. I
think you know what I do have, and this is
so silly. I have some dog tags that I made
when I was in high school because I just thought
it was cool to wear in shop. I didn't make
it myself. I had them made. Oh I see, oh
hey Richie. Richis like, I'm gonna get dog tag. That's
(01:50):
neat and um, I don't know. I went through a
little phase. I guess the dog tag and it's your
blood type on that it is and I actually know
where they are are so I could go find that.
I can wait, all right, I'll be back. Just give
me a couple of hours. Well, I legitimately have no
idea what my blood type is, um, because I didn't
(02:12):
go through a dog tag face and it's not on
my birth certificate. I went and looked, not there was
your real name, your real name, I think, so, I'm
pretty sure I wasn't an abductive baby. I've always had
this fear that, like I look at my birth certificate
and find out I'm like three years older or something
that I thought I was. This is a strange fear,
(02:32):
which would explain a lot. Really, yeah, it's fine, okay
if you were what now, If you're forty, yeah you are,
happy birthday, thank you. If I was forty seven, you
and Julius Caesar just celebrated a birthday that would be bad.
Or was it his birthday or he just died that
was the death day. Yeah, that was the opposite of
his birthday. Yeah, although some people have died on their birthday,
(02:55):
some famous people. Oh really yeah. I don't remember who though,
but at LEAs one famous person was at Ason or
Alexander Graham, Bell somebody like that that did they die
because of their birthday? Thomas Jefferson. Maybe No, it wasn't. Okay,
it wasn't anything like that as far as I know,
Like they didn't like a party, their last breath, blowing
out their candles, that'd be pretty neat. So blood types.
(03:20):
Did you know much about this? Did not? I didn't either.
I just suspected it was fascinating. They had a vague
awareness of it because, um remember the ten scientists who
were their own guinea pigs episode. Karl Landsteiner makes an
appearance in that, yeah, which I think means uh, well,
(03:42):
stein is Stone, So like land Stoner, he's a landstowner. Nice,
good for him. He was quite a doctor though for
a landstowner. He uh he was fearless. Yeah, well, not
really fearless. He was fearless about um needles, He didn't
mind with drawing blood from himself. Um. But the reason
(04:04):
we bring up carl An Stannard because he's the guy
who finally discovered blood types way back in the d R.
Yeah exactly. He got the Nobel for it in n Yeah,
so it's pretty recent stuff here, you know. Yeah, but
I thought the history, uh you did the research on this,
which thanks man, hats off to you. I appreciate it. Um.
(04:26):
I thought the history of it was super interesting. Um.
So yeah, carl Anstarner was the first guy, and we'll
talk about him a little more in depth than what
he did. Um, but he was the first guy to
identify the A, B O blood types. Um. But prior
to him, people were aware that there was some weirdness
with blood and that you couldn't just mix the stuff
willie nilly and expect good results. Because for a very
(04:49):
long time, humans, thanks to horrible things like vivisection, knew
that we are blood was very, very vital. It was
a vital life force. Yeah. And um, you know back
in the day, I think we've talked about bleeding in
barbers before, but they were real big on taking blood
out of people. Um. And at some point, I guess
(05:10):
some doctors must have, you know, taken some drugs and thought,
I wonder what would happen if we put blood into
a person? Right, Well, I mean, if you think about it,
if you're like, this is a vital life force. If
you have somebody who's dying from bleeding out like a hemorrhage,
which happened a lot like during childbirth, for example, then
you would think maybe if I took some healthy blood
(05:31):
and put it into a dying person who's bleeding to death,
they'll come back. Yeah. And of course, uh, they had
all sorts of like crazy notions back then, so they
thought it could like bleeding someone out. They thought putting
blood back in someone could cure weird things like insanity,
which we, of course we know now has nothing to
do with that kind of thing, right, So they said, well,
(05:51):
let's try this, let's see what we can do. Um.
They didn't start with human blood, oddly enough, he went
right to the animal blood. Uh. And it was not
good when they started taking blood from animals like cows,
calves and injecting it into human patients. Yeah. There was
(06:12):
a French doctor that put cast blood into a madman. Yeah,
Jean Baptiste. Denise the doctor, okay, and he Um. The
madman started to sweat and vomit and urinate the color
of chimney soot, and I guess the doctor said, yep,
he's a madman, and then he gave him another transfusion
(06:32):
after that after Yeah, and then the guy died and
actually Denise was charged with murder for that and he
was forced to quit medicine. Man, it was very very scandalous, um,
even though he was experimenting on a madman, which you
know at the time was pretty much fair game for anything.
I think the horrific accounts of the whole thing really
(06:53):
kind of captured the national imagination and as a result, um,
the Decree of Chalet was shoot by the French monarchy
that basically said oh no, no, no no, no more transfusions
and uh for a while, like basically a hundred and
fifty years this it was banned in France and the
(07:14):
effect that it had kind of extended over the continent.
It was basically de facto banned throughout Europe because these
horrible experiments by Denny's and others that had these terrible results.
It was like, you guys, this is mad science, and
you can't do that anymore because it's a really bad news.
France also banned ketchup when like three years ago the
(07:36):
band catch up, but chats up around still now. They
didn't ban the spelling of ketchup, they banned the condiment
in school cafeterias, and um, I think a lot of
people were put it on like uh, French cuisine, like
they don't want to catch up on their cuisine. But
it had to do with the sugar, yeah, the sugar intake.
(07:58):
But they said it's okay for French fries, which they
just called fries over there, exactly Fritz. I think so
they band catch up and then a long time ago
they banned blood transfusions. That's right, thank you, Franz. That's right.
And it stayed that way for a long time. I
mean there were doctors here and there in the nineteenth
century that that experimented around a little bit, of course. Yeah.
(08:20):
Well the Decree of shell it was sixty eight and
it really was prohibitive until the mid nineteenth century, the
early nineteenth century. Well, and that's when the guy named,
a physician in Britain named James Blendell was tired of
seeing his patients died during childbirth bleeding out like you
were talking about. Yeah, he's one of the heroes of
(08:40):
the story, he is. And he said, you know what,
there's got to be a better way, and let me
try and and you know, let me try and put
blood that's not an animal into someone. Yeah. The thing
that Blendell figured out was that the great error that
the early French doctors were doing was using the blow
out of a brute. As he put it, that don't
(09:02):
mean a jerk, right right, means an animal. He guys, like,
just let me watch my rugby. Um, the mixing like
the blood of one species with another. Blendell decided was
just a really bad move and that that's what it
caused these horrible reactions. Really good start, right, So human
human blood, he decided would should work, it would possibly work,
(09:24):
And he faced an immediate problem, which was, you have
no means of getting blood out of somebody and into
somebody else at this point, blood hell, what are you
gonna do? So he invented a contraption for it, like
the first blood transfusing contraption was invented by James Blendell
for this very recent Yeah, And he got some dogs
and he practiced on them, and uh, I have a
(09:45):
bad feeling that some of those dogs probably died. I
would guess along the way. But um he he eventually
got to a guy that was bleeding to death, and
I guess. The guy was like, um, doctor, I'm bleeding
a lot, and could you take some of that blood
and put it back into me? But because that might
be a good idea, because I'm told it's important, like
(10:07):
chimneys in the Yeah, let's just go for this, and
he did. Then the guy died. Well yeah, but it
was two days, which wasn't too bad. So I guess
he was like, he didn't see vomit or charcoal sut urine, right,
And the guy did say he was feeling less fainty.
So it did revive him for two days. That's a
(10:28):
great prognosis, I think. But because he didn't see all
those awful reactions immediately, he was sort of onto something.
Even though the guy died, he was encouraged by the results, right, Yeah,
so he went on to perform I believe ten more
blood transfusions and um the result, says the the author
(10:52):
of one of the articles we used for research, Carl Zimmer,
who wrote a great article in Mosaic about blood types UM.
As he put it, the results were dismal. Four out
of the ten survived. It's not too bad. I'm kind
of like, if this guy is just shooting in the dark,
mixing human blood together, and yeah, he's doing okay. But
(11:13):
what he what he proved was that you can take
human blood and transfer it from one human to another.
But there's still something we don't know, like what it
should be a hundred percent success rate? What's the problem here?
And he never lived to see the answer to it.
But it was Carl land Steiner who who figured it
out before them, because because blood Dell's success rate was
(11:37):
still pretty low and he was working in the twenties
something like that. In the mid nineteenth century, there was
a weird little um sidetrack that took place the milk Yeah,
in in North America and Canada. In the United States,
doctors decided that milk would be a better substitute for
(11:58):
transfusions than blow. Yeah. Were they mixing milk into the
blood or were they just injecting milk directly into the
blood stream. Here is some sheep's milk, um goat. It
looks or smells or taste nothing like human blood, but
let's give it a shot. They're thinking was that the
fats in the milk would be converted into white blood
(12:19):
cells and then into red blood cells in the blood stream.
So um, not even close. They tried with They tried
with cow, they try with goat, and then eventually they
try with human milk. And they were doing like massive
doses and stuff like twelve ounces a beer bottles worth
of goat milk injected directly into the human blood stream,
and the results were really really bad. Um. One patient
(12:42):
suddenly experienced unstagamous, which is uncontrollable like eye movements and
vertigo and spasms like immediately upon injected. And they're still
they're they're giving more injections. Some of them were like, Okay,
this is gonna work too much, right, So people were
slipping into comas and dying, and finally everyone was like,
(13:05):
this is wrong, this is not good. Let's stop doing this,
and they started using sailing. Yeah. You know who also
used injected milk, oh, Michael Jackson. That was a totally
different kind of milk based right, what's the name of
that stuff? We never get it right, but I think
it is prop think you just got it right, man,
(13:25):
So sad one. And it is a little side note.
One of the patients was given milk and then does
support that injection. They were injected with morphine and then whiskey.
So they're just basically putting anything they wanted to into
the blood streams of people back then. That's crazy. So
the point is this, Chuck, There was a little sidetrack.
And the reason there was a sidetrack is because still
(13:46):
even after Blundell's experiments were successful in some cases, blood
transmissions still had a really bad name. Yeah. Um, they
started to kind of figure it out a little bit though,
uh in at least what the problem him was when
they started to mix blood from different people together in
test tubes and they saw clumping, they saw red blood
(14:08):
cell sticking together, and said, you know what, um, the
reason why this is happening is because these are all
from sick people. That was their explanation at first, Like,
we got a bunch of sick blood, we're mixing it
with sick blood, so that's why it's doing all these
funky things. And it wasn't until the Landstoner came around
and said, you know what, maybe I should try to
(14:29):
mix the blood of healthy people together and see what happens. Yeah,
see if that landmark idea? Yeah, because I mean they
knew that blood clumped, that's one of the reasons they
went to milk, but they just thought it was because well,
you're stick already, there's nothing that could be done about that.
But yeah, when Landsteiner came along and thought that it
was groundbreaking, and he did it with his own blood
(14:50):
and with the blood of some of his lab assistants,
and he just started taking blood samples and then just
randomly mixing together people's blood to see if it clumped,
and when it didn't clump, he started mapping his patterns
and ultimately came up with what's now known as the
A B O blood typing group. Although initially he came
(15:10):
up with type A, type B, and type C. Yeah,
and then later on we found out about A B, right,
and C was changed to Oh yeah, but it was.
I mean, it's pretty crazy that he could even I mean,
he separated his plasma from his red blood cells. It's
it's nuts that he was even able to do that.
Back then, I didn't know things with that advance. Oh,
(15:31):
you just inject some morphine and whiskey into your blood
and man, it just kind of falls to the side. Uh.
Plasma by the way, you hear that word a lot.
You may not know what it is. It's just mostly water.
It's the liquid portion of your blood. That's what it's
the taxicab. Basically, it carries everything around. It carries the
red blood cells, among other things, hormones, waste, nutrients, all
sorts of stuff. So this is like a really really
(15:54):
really big advancement in medical science. Yeah, but what did
he say? Oh, he had a great quote. Is my favorite,
Like this landmark discovery and He's kind of like, well,
you might just want to look at this, he goes
it might be mentioned that the reported observations may assist
in the explanation of various consequences of therapeutic blood transfusions.
Like it's possible that this is what's been killing people
(16:17):
all the time. There's blood types. I don't know his
personality though, so I don't know how to read that.
It sounds a little smarmy. I I took it as
he was being very humble. Oh that's how I took it.
That's because you're a positive that's right. But what this
did was um millions of millions and millions, I mean,
(16:38):
I opened the door for everything to come when it
comes to blood typing. And after this break, we're going
to get a little bit into what these blood types aren't,
what they mean. All right, we're back and we are
(17:06):
talking about blood types and what this means. And it's
really pretty simple. It is. It's elegant on your red
blood cells. Um you have you can have lots of things,
but you can have sugars and proteins, and those sugars
and proteins can be expressed as antigens and antigens are
(17:27):
something that your immune system says, Hey, you got a
foreign invader coming, you might want to do something about it. Right,
It's something that you're a body can take as a
foreign invader, even if it's not a foreign invader, or
even if it's not harmful, But it's something that's found
on the surface of your red blood cells. Like pollen
is an anergen. We talked about that in the Allergy podcast.
(17:48):
So a blood type at its core is just a
description of what kind of anergen is found on the
surface of your red blood cells, right, which is just
a sugar or a protein, right, Penny. So if you're
if you have A type blood, you have the A
antigen present on your cells. If you have B type blood,
you have the B antigen. If you have O type blood,
(18:11):
you have neither A nor B. And then if you
have a B you have both A and B antigens
present on on the surface of your blood. Sounds pretty simple.
There's no real issues here except that blood types are
also associated with the type of antibody your blood produces
your body produces, right, that's right, And that's a protein
(18:32):
that your immune system uses to attack antign invader or
what it thinks is a foreign invader. So, if you
have type A blood, your body produces B antibodies, which
means that when your body comes in contact with type
BED antigens, which would be found on type B blood cells, right,
(18:53):
your body goes crazy and launches an immune response and
attacks those antigens, which is in the other way around
in that case with A and B. Yeah, they don't
like each other, No, they don't. So not only do
they have opposing and egens, they have opposing antibody. So
if you make say and B blood together, bad bad
things are going to happen. Yeah. And you know what,
you can also be allergic to your own blood, which
(19:14):
is not good. When we talked about mistaken identity, Uh,
that is something called hemolytic anemia and um immune hemolytic anemia,
and that's it sounds immediately like I thought, well, you're
dead if you've got that because your blood is allergic
to itself. Yeah, apparently people live with it are able
to almost everyone does. It's really rare to lead to
(19:35):
death these days. UM. I did look it up though,
and the first symptom it listed was feeling grumpy, which
I thought was like, well, perhaps we all have it
or he or has immune anemia. Um. So, like we said,
A and B do not like each other at all.
I think you said they're like the hat Fields and
the McCoys of blood types. Yeah, I mean they're in
(19:57):
a complete opposition to one another. That's right. Type OH
though is different so TYPO everybody it does. It doesn't
have any anigens on it on the blood cell surface.
So as far as blood transfusions go, you could take
TYPO and give it to type B people, Type A
people and TYPO people and even type A B people,
(20:20):
which makes type O the universal donor, right, oh negative specifically,
But that sounds all great and it is. But because
it doesn't have anigen's, it uh produces anybody's against A
and B antigens I'm sorry, antibodies against and B anogens, okay,
which means it can only accept oh transfusions, Yeah, which
(20:41):
is said because it's they're the universal donor, they can give,
but they can't. They can only get from other oaths
because they have antibodies against everything. But ohs right, A
B is the opposite of Oh. They're actually the universal recipient, right.
They have the A and B antigen on the surface
of the red blood cells. But like you said, they
(21:04):
are the universal recipient, so that's great. They don't have
any anybody's at all. So they can they can take
A they can be they can take oh, but they
have the antigens A and B, so A B or
OH can't take a B blood, so they just take
take take to recap. I'm sure I have a B blood.
(21:26):
I'm positive of it, you think, yeah, to recap. There's
a handy little chart here which we do not have.
Um no, but it's from the American Red Cross. Webon
like I think everyone that works at the Red Cross
probably has is printed out, like in their wallet. I'm
so everyone who's listening to this in the Red Cross
share it with somebody. Group OH, though can donate red
(21:48):
blood cells to anybody. Group A can donate red blood
cells to ais and a B S. Group B can
donate red blood cells to bees and a bees in
Group A B can donate to other A B is
but can receive it from all others. Take take take
pretty neat um, So there you go. That's the type
A BO blood type and it's pretty. It was a
(22:10):
sweeping discovery and that's it, right. No, more about blood types. No,
this is the end, beautiful friend, it is not the end.
Uh No, because it turns out the A, B O
blood typing or blood groups are really one of many
twenty two we're up to by now. Yeah. Remember earlier
I was talking about UM positive or negative. Well that too,
(22:31):
but I was talking about the dog tags. Yeah, I
was talking about that, sugars, booms, sugars. Yes, Sugars and
proteins are the two different antigens that you can have
on your red blood cells. We said that the A, B,
O U grouping are the sugars, so that leaves the proteins,
and that's where you get into the r h uh
(22:52):
If you've ever heard your blood as negative or positive.
That was named after the Reesus monkey spelled r H
E s U s, which they were obviously the test subjects.
It basically just says, if you're positive for that protein
or negative for that protein. Yeah, it's just it's another
anogen and either you have it or you don't, so
you can be oh negative, oh positive. So that would
(23:13):
mean that you are in the O type blood group,
so you have sugar anogens on or you know, you
don't have A or B on your blood cell surface.
But if you're positive, you would have neither A or
B on your surface, but you would have the recess
anogen on there. Right, And just like the A, B
O types, the r H types don't mix either. Know.
(23:34):
As a matter of fact, there's a really terrible condition
called mother fetus incompatibility, which the means the mother is
RH negative and the baby is RH positive. So as
the baby is developing, it's blood cells that carry the
r H anogen are taken as foreign invaders by the
mother's blood, so the baby, the fetus is attacked by
(23:56):
the mother's immune system. Not a good position for a
fetus to begin. But this is also very treatable these days. Yeah,
I got the impression. Yeah, I looked into what it
used to be a really scary thing, obviously, but now
they know how to treat it. And I think on
the first your firstborn, it's not really a big deal
at all. Oh yeah, and the reason why because the
(24:17):
blood is not mixing right right. Well, No, that first exposure,
your body is like, what the heck is this? It
gets caught off guard. Second one, it's kind of like,
fool me once, Shame on you, fool me twice, I'm
gonna get you, and it goes after the fetus and
then it just gets this immune response gets more and
more heightened with each pregnancy. I'm almost positive that's the case.
(24:38):
I ran across it during UM during research for this,
and if I'm not mistaken, that's what happens. Okay. Well,
I know roughly of the population is r H positive,
so you have much more likelihood to be RH positive
than negative. Okay in life, huh, I know that I
would have guessed negative I would be more common. I
(25:03):
don't know. I just guess that you need to improve
your outlook my friends. UM. So, the r H blood groups,
the A, B O blood groups. There two of UM
I think twenty two at least total blood groups that
have been identified. There's other ones like Diego, kid, kill,
Duffy blood groups, and all of them are descriptors of
(25:25):
anergens that can be found on the surface of a
person's red blood cells. So your blood type can go
far beyond a positive or OH negative. It can be
like a negative Duffy positive kill UM to the third power.
Who knows why not, But it's just basically the presence
(25:50):
or the absence of these different anigens and these combinations
can form the thing is we now know and Landsteiner
figured it out early on, but didn't didn't discover that
actual mechanism. But we know that each one is is
controlled by a different gene or a mutation on a
specific gene. And like I said, Landsteiner kind of figured
it out early on that it was heritable, that blood
(26:12):
types are heritable, and as a result blood typing where
it was used in early paternity tests, like almost from
the outset of Landsteiner's research. Um. The other thing that
they found out was that you can also be a
that sounds a little gross, a secretor or a non secretor,
which means that if you're a secretor, your antigens can
(26:33):
be secreted into other fluids like saliba or mucus in
your body toward off other infections, usually at the surface
of the skin. Yeah, so you're I think are secretors
in the United States And that's just another subclassification even
to rule people out. Um quickly, you're a secretor non secretor. Yeah,
(26:57):
ah lois a secretor got us a great idea. He's
secreting all over the place. Um. So like you said,
land Uh, the Landstoner determined that you could test maternity
and because of that in the ninet nineties, that led
to the discovery of that A B O gene. And basically,
if you can have that A antigen be expressed, or
(27:20):
if something is a little tweaked, you can have that
B antrogen expressed, right, or if they're both tweaked, you
can have both A B I think in that case
you inherit the A mutation from one parent and the
G mutation from another parent. Yeah, did you say G
B the gene there's another blood type, the A G.
(27:41):
I just came up with it. Uh. And then if
it's completely shut off, then that is where you get
your OH blood type. Right. But we have to point out, um,
that the A B O blood type isn't like the
A is the presence of a egine. B is the
presence of an engine, and OH is the presence of nothing.
It's not the case. Um Again. Carl Zimmer in that
(28:02):
mosaic article put it like, if the A antigen is
like a two story home in one former fashion, and
the B antigen is like a different type of two
story home, the OH is like the single story ranch
that the second stories are built on top mid century modern. Yeah,
to love. It's my preference in houses. I like those two. Um,
(28:25):
I wonder what I wonder what blood type the double
wide trailer is. I don't know. It's a single story,
so technically would be oh as well, there's secretors for sure.
So Chuck, um we talked. You said that RH positive
was the most common for the r H blood type. Right,
that's right. What's the most common for A B O types? Uh? Well,
you've got OH is the most OH positive is the
(28:46):
most common H. Then you've got A, then you've got B.
Then you've got a B as the least common, and um.
Across ethnic groups, it's uh, it's pretty interesting. Hispanic folks
have higher number of os. Asian folks have a higher
higher number of bees. And there's reasons for this, which
we'll get into later. They're pretty interesting, I think. So, um,
(29:10):
all the teaser we should say with when you do
we've kind of touched on what happens when you mix blood,
remember the chimney sit urine um. But the real on
the molecular level, on the cellular level, what's going on
when you mix blood types is that the antigens present
in one blood type that doesn't mix with another one
(29:31):
attracts the antibodies. Yeah, because it thinks it's some foreign invader. Yep.
So it's like the troops. You're coming into a house
that has anybodies that are primed against the engines on
your blood right right, and um, those anergens or those
antibodies surround the anergens and just kind of collect and
clump around the red blood cells. That's a glutination. Yeah.
(29:53):
That Uh, that just sounded gross to me. It does.
It's a gross word. I think medical. I think I
figured out medical terms that have gs and them and glug. Yeah,
it just sounds kind of gross because what happens after
a glutination is it coagulates. Yeah, and that thickened blood
is tough to pump through your body. It's pretty simple, really.
(30:16):
You give blood clots everywhere and you have trouble breathing,
your lungs filled with blood and you drown in it.
And again you're if if you're injected with cow milk,
your eyes go crazy and you spas them in some
new coma and die. But if not, you're just gonna
drown in your own turnal bleeding in your lungs. But
(30:36):
what's going on is the result of a massive immune
response launched by your body because of the presence of
what it takes as a foreign invader. If you take
the blood of somebody with the same blood type as yours,
even though it comes from another person, entirely your blood
is used to the antigen present on that blood type
because that's the one that produces itself, and it just
(30:58):
thinks it's more of the same blood that it produced
in your body. That's right, So this is all super interesting.
Uh I guess after this break we're going to talk
a little bit about why we have blood types and
where they came from to begin with. Al Right, before
(31:30):
the break, my friend, we were talking about what are
blood types come from? It's true, that was the title
of the segment. Well, I had no I don't even
know what that accident was or who that was supposed
to be. It was the one group that you can
make fun of now, which is this non existent when
(31:51):
you just made the indefinable group thinking about that the
other day, is there anybody Germans you can make fun
of Germans? Still, right? And you can make fun of
white men? Oh yeah, because like the n asking for
it for millennia totally. Yeah, there's nothing you can say
to a white man that is, you know, truly offensive.
It's true. Yeah, I guess it is, sad man. This
(32:12):
just took a really surprising n I remember my sociology
teacher in college that taught as that. Yeah, because they
he was putting up bad words about different races and
ethnic groups and sexes. And he's like, you might notice something.
He's a there's no word that you can call a
white man that is truly truly offensive. And really there
really isn't. I mean, a d bag, I guess, but
(32:32):
that's not offensive. You're just either that or you're not.
It's the truth or it's not. All right, So let's
get back to blood types. Where did it come from?
I know who it is. It's Balky bar taka mos.
I can't make no. He was from an unknown country, right, yeah, yeah,
there you go. All right. So primate species, my friend,
(32:55):
we found out that primate species had blood that you
could make with human blood. It wasn't a cow, it
wasn't a sheep, but primates because they're closer relatives than
cows and sheeps does well, that's what that was the assumption,
but it's still scientists were kind of scratching their heads.
They're like, oh, wait a minute, and what are we
(33:15):
to make of this? Because it suggests two things. It
suggests that either blood types are so old that they
predate human and uh like chimps and girls, so we
we share some sort of common ancestor that have blood
types itself, or that blood types evolved independently in different species.
(33:38):
Because it's like such a great idea, right right, Either way,
they still said, well, what are these things for? Yeah,
And some people for a long time said that, oh,
was the original the O G blood type, Yeah, which
makes sense because it's the simplest one. Yeah. And they
thought that, you know, our original ancestors in Africa had type.
(34:00):
Other people thought A B might have been the original
because um it evolved into a B and O, which
that sort of makes sense to and one lens right
and then is broken down into its constituent. But neither
one of them, it turns out, are probably true. Right. Well,
we we honestly don't know. We just there's first of all,
(34:20):
not all of the primates genes have been surveyed, so
we can't really say, but they've looked into a lot
of them. They have UM and the results are still
just kind of baffling. Like guerrillas just have type by UM.
I think chimps have type A and O. But that's it. Uh.
We we don't quite know what to make of it.
We do know that it's not just primates that have
(34:41):
blood types. Cats and dogs both too. Yeah, and I
never thought about it that you can have your cat
or dog if you want to feel really good about yourself. Yeah,
but really piss off your animals. You can take them
in and have them give blood. Yeah, there's animal dog
like dog and cat blood banks. Yeah, there's one right here. Indicator.
(35:01):
Consult your vet. Huh yeah, consult your vet, piss off
your cat, take them in to give blood, and explain
to them what a great thing they're doing, right right,
Just wear like leather falconry gloves while you're doing it.
It is a great thing to do. But yeah, it
just never occurred to me. Of course, that's what you
need to do as a responsible pet owner, right, I
(35:21):
guess maybe start with donating your human blood first, and
then once you got that down, pat bring your dog
into the mix. Well, you have to go to a
special dog and cat blood bank. Yeah, can tell your vet.
And I think if I looked at a my all
mine are too old, which is sad. I think you
can't be over seven. Well at least did the one indicator.
Maybe there's different looking for spry blood, I guess. So, yeah,
(35:44):
it's very sad for me. My guys. Um, so here's
a neat thing, though, Josh. Blood types aren't even said
in stone necessarily they can change, and it's mind blowing
it is. And I found this really neat. Uh, well,
a couple of neat things. One is not only can
it change, We'll go and explain how it can change naturally. Well,
our old friend epigenetics, Um, what was that episode we did,
(36:08):
can your can my Grandfather's diet short in my Life?
One of our best? Yes, it was, And no one
has any ideas about epigenetics because of the title. But
if you are looking for an epigenetics episode, go listen
to that one. But basically, because of changes in the
way genes are expressed, if your say, a mutation on
your gene is shut down epigenetically, then all of a
(36:31):
sudden over time, because red blood cells have about a
four month life span and bloods is constantly regenerating itself. Um,
you will turn into an OH blood type person within
your lifetime. You may not even notice, and until you
get a blood transfer, then you're gonna notice. But I
imagine that are good friends at the Red Cross test
(36:51):
blood type that kind of thing with each donation and
just leave it to to presumption. I don't think we
even pointed out they to test this. They still is
a similar method of mixing blood and scene if it clumps,
the same thing that the Landstoner did way back in
the day. So I found another couple of cool things. Though, Um,
this is from two years ago and I couldn't get
anything more recent. I think it is still under review.
(37:15):
But they think now that they can actually not synthetically,
but just not naturally change your blood type two oh
to make you. And this would be great because if
you could change blood type and this is in the body,
this is in the blood bag, change it from a
B two oh, then that means, all of a sudden
you have a more valuable blood because it's more universally accepted. Uh.
(37:39):
And what they've done is um, of course it was
the University of Copenhagen Professor Einrich Calaussen. They're always doing
the best work, it seems like. Um. So they found
they studied different types of fungi and bacteria and found, uh,
they're looking for proteins that could help, and they found
two that could help. One was called Elizabeth Kenya men
(38:03):
in go specate them septicum. Nice. My guess is that
Professor Erorich either has a daughter or a wife named Elizabeth. Yeah,
who's like, I got a bacteria or he's in big trouble. Uh.
And then the other one is Bacteriosis fragilus and basically
those two yielded enzymes that remove those A and B antigens. Yeah,
(38:26):
they just sheered those sugars off. They go in and
made it the O type. So I don't know where
that's at now, but that was just from two years ago. Uh.
And then this this case of this girl that doctor
say is a one in six billion event. At nine
years old, she got a liver transplant. And everyone knows
when you get an organ transplant, getting it to take
(38:47):
is a big deal. Uh, not having it rejected. And
what they do is they give you medication, usually for life,
to make sure it stays not rejected. What they found
with her was that when she got her new liver,
the drugs actually made her sick, the ones to keep
her from rejecting it. And what they found when they
tested her blood was that her body was changing its
(39:08):
blood type and completely changed its blood type to where
she didn't need those drugs anymore. It changed from OH
negative to oh positive, right, and she completely went off
those drugs. And I think she's like twenty years old now,
and the doctors I don't think they have any explanation
for it other than I guess this can happen. Her
body was like like the kind of local tough that
(39:31):
fights with pool queues or something like that. You know.
I was like, all right, just what I gotta do.
I gotta do what I gotta do keep this liver. Uh.
So that's pretty awesome. Yeah, that was super awesome. One
in six billion. It's pretty nice to have that quantified
for you. You know. I bet she feels like a
lucky lady. So, Chuck, we've kind of laid out by
(39:51):
now that blood types are confounding science still um but
there are some guests, some assumptions about why we have them,
Although that is the that is still the question that
plagues blood researchers. Why do we have blood types. Well,
you'd think it was because, you know, because they're fighting
off uh, blood born invaders. Like, that's why we have them.
(40:14):
But that doesn't explain why we have different ones, right exactly.
And then what confounds that even further is the fact
that apparently some blood types actually increase your susceptibility to
some blood born invaders. Yes, so some blood types help
certain fight certain diseases and not others. And like you said,
then there are others that make you more susceptible. Yeah,
(40:35):
and not only in the case of like where oh,
not having this a antigen makes me more susceptible because
the a antigen fights off say I think malaria more.
It's not even the case of that. In some cases,
having an antigen proves to be food for certain kind
of um germs and bacteria that cause illness actually binds easier. Yeah,
(40:59):
it binds or they eat like the sugar of the
protein and they just go attack your body. Like it's
like food, Like your blood type is food to certain
kinds of diseases that make you terribly sick. Right, So
from an evolutionary standpoint, those things should not exist. Yeah,
the only thing to me that makes sense is when
you included this word in here, which is variation, And
(41:23):
that to me makes sense because variation is generally pretty
good for a population, right, because it covers more bases. Uh.
And in this case that maybe why I mean they
have found Kevin Kane, this guy. University of Toronto did
a lot of investigating on this and found that, like
you said, it was, Type OH protects against malaria better.
(41:46):
Type A makes you more susceptible to pulp smallpox. Type
B you're more likely to be infected by E. Coli.
So it's just you should know what your blood type
is and what you're more likely to get and not get. Yeah,
would think. And again remember we said that UM that
some some anergin service binding sites for certain kinds of bacteria.
(42:08):
Same thing with the neuro virus UM, which has nothing
to do with your bloods seem to make any sense
at first at first, until you find out that not
only does UM do the does your body express your
blood type anogens on the surface of your red blood cells,
it also expresses them on the surface of the cells
that line your gut. And neuro virus has had a
(42:29):
lot to do with your gut. So specifically, I think
if you're Type OH, you UM have basically what accounts
what amounts to a landing pad for UM neuro virus
to bind too, and you are really going to be
hating it compared to everybody else on the cruise ship
that has Type A B or A B or if
(42:51):
your type OH, you might get a ruptured Achilles tendon
or an ulcer a little more easily, and that weird. Yeah,
they've linked a lot of a lot of susceptibilityy to
illness is two different blood types, So infections, cancers, memory loss,
heart disease get this. Type A blood types are most
most susceptible to stress, which makes a lot of sense
(43:13):
because the type of personality is like, I don't think
those are l go go go, let's get things done
kind of thing type. But that's not what you know.
We don't know. Uh. All this ignorance though lead to
a discovery, while it didn't lead to but it's exemplified
by the discovery in ninety two and Bombay UM patients
(43:37):
that didn't have a B O blood type at all confounding.
It's called the Bombay phenotype and it was discovered in
the fifties, and basically it's um. It's really rare. It's
again Carl Zimmer comes in to say, if owes that
single story ranch and A is two story and b's
a two story house, then this Bombay phenotype is an
(43:59):
empty vacant lot. Yeah, like these are the guys that
have nothing there. Yeah, as far as goes and uh,
in India, you're about one in ten thousand. You have
one inten thousand chants of having this UM blood type,
and one in four million in the world. But the
thing that's confounding about is these people don't appear to
(44:20):
be any more or less fit or healthy than people
in the A B O blood group. Yeah, it's just
if you need that blood, you're in bad shape. Yeah,
you have to get Bombay because I think uh, I
think blood has a shelf life of about forty two days.
So I mean imagine places like India and Bombay especially,
they probably have a lot more of this on hand.
(44:41):
But if you're traveling in the United States, maybe you
might have a bit of a time if you're bleeding out.
It was also a general hospital subplot, wasn't really I
was just poking around and it was like a leave
it to the soap opera to make that like the
rarest blood type a sub paternity subplot. That was how
(45:02):
they proved out fraternity for one of the somebody had
the Bombay phenixs. Yeah, they're like, it is you and
you're a secretory fuzz uh. So we've talked about how
the blood types are they make you more or less
susceptible of the disease, right. They think that that's one
of the reasons why UM. Different blood types appear in
(45:25):
different UM ethnic groups differently. They think that it's evidence
that in the not too distant evolutionary past, certain UM,
certain parasites or bacteria or germs or viruses that have
some sort of preference for a certain blood type passed
through an area and largely wiped out the people with
(45:47):
that blood type, left the other blood type standing. Yeah,
we were talking earlier about in China UM, and actually
in Russian and India two they have a lot more
blood type b UM, and that is because the bubona
plague and malaria outbreaks that swept through those countries not
too long ago and basically wiped out a lot of
the o's and a's. So you've got a lot more bees. Yeah,
(46:10):
this isn't This hasn't been proven in science. Things aren't
proven that there's more and more and more evidence that
backs it up. It seems to be a correlation. Yeah,
there is. And it's not just China, Russia, and India.
Africa has a lot of type uh oh people, which
is less susceptible than malaria UM, and Africa has a
(46:32):
lot of malaria. So it does make a lot of
sense that that's that's what happened. So even if the
reason we have blood types isn't because UM, it provides
a defense against defend blood borne um illnesses or whatever.
It's a function for sure of blood types. If you
(46:52):
want to not get teleological here, well who does teleologists?
Oh we'll finish up here with two uh examples of
well one example of HOKEM. One example that may or
may not be HOKEM, but it's probably HOKEM at the
very least. It's fun the blood type diet. There was
(47:14):
a natural path named Peter damont at Adamo Adamo I
actually funny enough. I was like, how do you pronounce that?
I found an old Regis and Kathy Lee. I don't
know if I would trust that. Well, he was standing
next to him, and he seemed to agree with it.
So usually though, when it's a di apostrophe, is just
(47:37):
dottamo and not diadamo. He didn't correct Regius. Well, who
does Kathy Lee? Oh, this is pre Kelly Rippa. Yeah,
it was Regis and Kathy Lee. Well, so she was drunk,
and just as Regis, all right, this is he is
a natural path with my wife calls a hokey pokey doctor.
(47:57):
And he published a very famous and popular book called
Eat Right for Number four Your Type, Eat Right for
Your Type UM seven million copies to date, sixty languages
has been translated into and he postulated that um our
blood types came along over the years, um as we evolved,
(48:18):
and that we should eat according to win our blood type.
What was going on when our blood type first came about? Right?
Like evolutionarily speaking exactly so like um the I think
he's he decided that the type oh blood type came
about during hunter gatherer era. Yeah, you're saying he decided
(48:39):
it's very key here, Yeah, I mean I don't know
what it was based on other than his guesses. Um,
but he and then he said type A was the
dawn of agriculture. Type B was from the Himalayan highlands
ten thousand and fifteen thousand years ago. And then he
said Type A B is a modern blending of Type
A and Type B. Pretty convenient. So if you, for example,
(49:00):
or type A, your blood type came about during the
hunter gather um days, and your your diet should consist
mostly of like raw vegetarian foods. Now, that's during the
dawn of agriculture. Hunter gatherer would be meat eaters. Oh sorry, yeah, yeah,
so that would be type Oh, it would be the
meat eaters, right. So Type A would be dawn of agriculture.
(49:22):
So you would eat um, Yeah, vegetables should he said,
like you yeah, type oh meat rich, no grains and
dairy type be lots of dairy um. Also called the
death diet right, and to avoid foods that aren't suited
to your blood type. And he did this. Um he said,
(49:43):
it will reduce infections and you'll lose weight and you
can fight cancer and I can sell books a lot
of books pretty much was the reason. And they've done
testing over the years, the Red Cross of Belgium did
a lot of people have and they've all said this
is not true. No, the Red Cross of Belgium did
a survey of a thousand studies and found no directive
(50:03):
and it's supporting the health effects of the A B
O blood type diet. End quote. But that's not to
say that these diets aren't good for you. For example,
that type A diet, it's basically vegetarianism. So of course
you're gonna lose weight, you're gonna lower your body mass index. Uh,
you you may, whatever you're going to. You're going on
(50:24):
a vegetarian diet. There, but none of these have to
do a blood type. No, Like, if you're a type oh,
go on the type A diet and you will see
those same benefits, same effects, So don't go on the
type B diet. So basically it seems like this guy
um just took some some pretty good diets except for yeah,
the type the type B diet is. Yeah, you'd a
bunch of fats and dairy. Although fats have gotten a
(50:46):
bad rap. Yeah, I mean not all fats are bad,
of course we know that. But but supposed diet is
not the one to go with. So that was hokum. Allegedly,
this I'm at the risk of respecting our friends in Asia.
I'm not gonna call this complete hokum. Well, they they
believe it pretty like like we believe it is. Actually
(51:06):
it's gonna say, like we believe astrology. A lot of
people here just have astrology is like a fun thing
to read. They really take it seriously in Japan apparently. Yeah, so, um,
I don't know what you would compare it to over here.
I don't even know that it has an analog astrology.
I guess, um, I guess the but the but yeah,
(51:27):
there's the distinction is is that like over there, more
people definitely take it as as fact. Yes, I'm saying
they take it way more seriously. But it's being born
with something that determines your personality type. So back in
the seven two kg, fur Fura Kawa, who is a
professor at Tokyo Women's Teachers School, he decided that blood types,
(51:49):
and this is based on his observations, blood types and
personality types were related somehow, and he started to do
some studies and he decided, I've got this figured out.
I I've got them mapped. I have type A, type
B type baby and type OH personality types map And
it actually caught on, uh, in the East big time
and still is today. And the Japanese actually have a
(52:12):
word for a type of harassment, say basically getting passed
over for a job or not getting into a certain
school based on your blood type. Yeah, buddhah, Yeah, is
that right? Is a good pronouncement. I think of pronunciation,
I couldn't even frown that up, but blood type harassment. Yeah.
And we'll go over these because it's, um, they're cute.
(52:34):
It's interesting. Um, if you're blood type A, you were
going to be kind and compassionate and put others before yourself.
You're calm on the outside, but you have a lot
of inner turmoil. Um, but you're a good listener, and
you're gonna have a lot of friends, and you get
along with others well. But it's typically at the expense
of your own sense of balance and happiness. You're just
(52:54):
giving a little too much. Yeah, you're not speaking up
for yourself necessarily in order to keep the peace. That's right.
That's type A. Yeah. Type B is the George Clooney
of blood types. Smug. No, he's not smug. What I
don't think he's smug. What it's like, it's defining characteristic.
I don't think he smug at all. Oh my god, really, yes,
(53:18):
I'm about a faint. No, I don't find him smug
at all. I think if you agree with someone, then
you probably don't find them smug. I agree with him
in a lot of ways. I think it's a really
cool thing to do to spend your money the higher
satellites to track war lords in Africa. That's about as
cool a thing as you can do with your riches
as anybody. Right, I still think he's smug. I don't
think he smugging. I can't like. I don't think he
(53:39):
can help it. I think we have different definitions of smug.
If you mean handsome and winning and charming, then yes,
he's smug. And being a hundred and ten percent aware
that you're handsome and charming and winning at any given moment,
down to the molecular levels. That's my definition of smug.
Awareness of your good looks. That yeah, over confident self
(54:01):
awareness is smugness. I'm on team Cleaney. I'm not opposed
George Claney. I just think I just can't imagine not
thinking you smug. Well, imagine it, baby, like I don't
even know you right now. Well, that's because I'm a
personality Type BE blood Type BE, like my buddy George,
that means I'm outgoing, in friendly. I'm a people person,
(54:22):
and I don't do that at the expense of my
own feelings. It just comes naturally, too, yeah, George. Whereas
like a Type A would like you're a people person,
but you really expend a lot of energy being a
people person. Type B. It's just like you said, it
just comes naturally. You're very adjustable. Uh, you're good at
a job if you have to deal with people. I
(54:42):
don't think we said that. Type A blood people don't
like to have jobs where they deal with other people. Right.
It gives examples of programmers, accountants, writers, librarians are good
jobs for Type A. Uh, and Type BE like Mr Cliney,
is not suitable for marriage because they're flirty and playful
and sm YEA, so say Korean women, that's right. Um,
(55:04):
you added the smug thing by the way at the end, Yes,
of course I did. That was pretty smug. Type A
B though they are freedom loving. Yeah, they're strong and rational.
They don't worry about the little things. Uh. They can
look at life's challenges with emotion removed and say this
is what I need to do to get past this.
(55:25):
So their psychopaths, uh, not necessarily. They seem to not
have issues with the relationships, and they're quite popular. They
seem to be the winningest personality group. I'm gonna go
a psychopath for that. I mean, I see what you're saying,
but yeah, I don't think so. Uh. And then finally
we have personality. Oh blood type. Oh, you're responsible and
practical and rule conscious. You're a great leader and very
(55:48):
determined to achieve your goals. You're physically strong, so you
might be a good athlete. Yeah, and they're most happy
with other typeos or type abes, and that are the
personality blood types. I've never heard of that. That's all
we know about blood time. I thought that was pretty neat.
I never heard that that was a big thing. Yeah,
you've me told me about that. I was like, we're
(56:09):
doing blood type. She's like, oh, you know about like
Japanese blood types, right, blood type personality type. Yeah, She's like,
you know, like George Clooney, smuck. You're like, we're meant
to be together. It's funny. We just hold hands and
watch monuments manners, just like, oh god, alright, Chuck. If
(56:31):
people want to know more about blood types, I would
steer clear how stuff works because it has one of
the densest, most incomprehensible articles I've ever read in my
life on this site about blood It really needs rewriting. UM.
This this thing you put together was great, Thank you.
I appreciate that. UM, and a lot of it was
based on a mosaic article by Carl Zimmer about blood types,
(56:51):
which I strongly recommend you go read. Uh. And since
I said Carl Zimmer, it's time for listener mail, UH
gonna call this truck drive and chemist, Guys. I was
a truck driver from O five to O eight and
listen to your show back then I left trucking to
go to college and I was taking chemistry. We had
to do a research paper on a compound, and so
(57:12):
I always want to know about diesel, so I looked
into diesel. We should do one on diesel. He says,
it sounds pretty interesting. UM, I learned it's some really
interesting thing about Rudolph Diesel's invention and about the man himself.
The original diesel compound was actually made from peanuts, and
he invented the engine for small plants. Uh was it
George Washington Carver, No, it was Rudolph Diesel. Um. He
(57:36):
uh invented it the engine UM for small plants that
could power um, not you know, biological plants like a
power plant. Yeah. Uh yeah, you could power a warehouse
to compete with the big industrial warehouses during the Industrial Revolution.
So he was a man of the people. But here's
the conspiracy theory part. Rudolph Diesel found out his diesel
(57:57):
engine was going to be powering Germany's newest warships called
Unta sea boots means under sea boats. Where are you
gonna say? Not that? Uh? And he was really angry
that they would use his invention for war. So he
told the German naval representative that if they were going
to use his diesel for war, he would take his
(58:19):
designs to England so they would have it too and
could counter Germany, and that Germany might as well not
use it. And they shot him on the spot. Basically,
he's not a smart thing to announce, No, he he
pushed all his chips in and lost. He told off.
The government boarded a ferry to England in the evening
to arrive in the morning. Uh. He left word to
wake him since he had an appointment with the Naval
(58:41):
Office in Britain, and when the ferry ducked the next morning,
he was gone. Eight days later, his body was found
floating in the English Channel. And this all happened a
few short years before World War One. Wow, I can't
believe that, like government agents would fascinate somebody when they
threatened to take a very important thing to another country. Yeah. Um,
(59:02):
so that sounds like a good podcast. He says. You
have a man fighting for the common man, man that
didn't like his Anvintioninis for war and engine we still
used today and could be using more in the future.
And that is from Russ Fortney. Russ, my friend, I
think you just did a little mini podcast. Thanks a
lot for that, man. I love I love history, me too,
(59:23):
love history. Never knew about Rudolph Diesel, no no idea.
I didn't even know somebody's last name. I just didn't.
It was a thing, you know, like Jimmy gasoline right,
or that Elizabeth bacteria Elizabeth bacteria. Jimmy, guess if you
want to tell us something that we don't know about
that will blow our tops because it's so cool, Like Russ,
(59:47):
you can tweet to us at s y s K Podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
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(01:00:08):
thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry is
in a certain kind of mood today. She's making jokes
and stuff talking. Yeah, she made a joke that would
(00:22):
have been great for the show, and I was like, well,
look at you. And then she was like, oh, I
didn't say you could use that joke. It's her man,
she's got her spinning bow tie on the day. I'm
gonna say the joke. Jerry said that her blood type
was a positive, which she thought was the most optimistic
of blood types. It doesn't even make sense, Sure it does,
that doesn't She's a positive person. Oh, I see. I
(00:42):
think of a positive is like a plus. So like
you were the star stum. Yeah, the star student of
the blood type. That makes sense. Though. That's not a
bad joke, Jerry know that. I understand. It's the first
joke she's given us in seven years. Way to go, Jeers,
that's gonna be a trivia question. You're down the roads
just knocking up with Jerry's one joke. How are you, sir?
(01:05):
I'm doing good. I'm feeling a positive myself. I'm feeling
oh negative. Wow, this joke just keep I don't even
know my blood type. I don't know mine neither. Is
that crazy? Yeah, that's great. And I've never had to
I mean, I've given blood IVY, but I don't. I don't.
I've never received blood. Get the records. Don't they test
(01:29):
your blood type? I guess, but I don't. Ever, I
don't know. It should be on your donor card. I
think you know what I do have, and this is
so silly. I have some dog tags that I made
when I was in high school because I just thought
it was cool to wear in shop. I didn't make
it myself. I had them made. Oh I see, oh
hey Richie. Richis like, I'm gonna get dog tag. That's
(01:50):
neat and um, I don't know. I went through a
little phase. I guess the dog tag and it's your
blood type on that it is and I actually know
where they are are so I could go find that.
I can wait, all right, I'll be back. Just give
me a couple of hours. Well, I legitimately have no
idea what my blood type is, um, because I didn't
(02:12):
go through a dog tag face and it's not on
my birth certificate. I went and looked, not there was
your real name, your real name, I think, so, I'm
pretty sure I wasn't an abductive baby. I've always had
this fear that, like I look at my birth certificate
and find out I'm like three years older or something
that I thought I was. This is a strange fear,
(02:32):
which would explain a lot. Really, yeah, it's fine, okay
if you were what now, If you're forty, yeah you are,
happy birthday, thank you. If I was forty seven, you
and Julius Caesar just celebrated a birthday that would be bad.
Or was it his birthday or he just died that
was the death day. Yeah, that was the opposite of
his birthday. Yeah, although some people have died on their birthday,
(02:55):
some famous people. Oh really yeah. I don't remember who though,
but at LEAs one famous person was at Ason or
Alexander Graham, Bell somebody like that that did they die
because of their birthday? Thomas Jefferson. Maybe No, it wasn't. Okay,
it wasn't anything like that as far as I know,
Like they didn't like a party, their last breath, blowing
out their candles, that'd be pretty neat. So blood types.
(03:20):
Did you know much about this? Did not? I didn't either.
I just suspected it was fascinating. They had a vague
awareness of it because, um remember the ten scientists who
were their own guinea pigs episode. Karl Landsteiner makes an
appearance in that, yeah, which I think means uh, well,
(03:42):
stein is Stone, So like land Stoner, he's a landstowner. Nice,
good for him. He was quite a doctor though for
a landstowner. He uh he was fearless. Yeah, well, not
really fearless. He was fearless about um needles, He didn't
mind with drawing blood from himself. Um. But the reason
(04:04):
we bring up carl An Stannard because he's the guy
who finally discovered blood types way back in the d R.
Yeah exactly. He got the Nobel for it in n Yeah,
so it's pretty recent stuff here, you know. Yeah, but
I thought the history, uh you did the research on this,
which thanks man, hats off to you. I appreciate it. Um.
(04:26):
I thought the history of it was super interesting. Um.
So yeah, carl Anstarner was the first guy, and we'll
talk about him a little more in depth than what
he did. Um, but he was the first guy to
identify the A, B O blood types. Um. But prior
to him, people were aware that there was some weirdness
with blood and that you couldn't just mix the stuff
willie nilly and expect good results. Because for a very
(04:49):
long time, humans, thanks to horrible things like vivisection, knew
that we are blood was very, very vital. It was
a vital life force. Yeah. And um, you know back
in the day, I think we've talked about bleeding in
barbers before, but they were real big on taking blood
out of people. Um. And at some point, I guess
(05:10):
some doctors must have, you know, taken some drugs and thought,
I wonder what would happen if we put blood into
a person? Right, Well, I mean, if you think about it,
if you're like, this is a vital life force. If
you have somebody who's dying from bleeding out like a hemorrhage,
which happened a lot like during childbirth, for example, then
you would think maybe if I took some healthy blood
(05:31):
and put it into a dying person who's bleeding to death,
they'll come back. Yeah. And of course, uh, they had
all sorts of like crazy notions back then, so they
thought it could like bleeding someone out. They thought putting
blood back in someone could cure weird things like insanity,
which we, of course we know now has nothing to
do with that kind of thing, right, So they said, well,
(05:51):
let's try this, let's see what we can do. Um.
They didn't start with human blood, oddly enough, he went
right to the animal blood. Uh. And it was not
good when they started taking blood from animals like cows,
calves and injecting it into human patients. Yeah. There was
(06:12):
a French doctor that put cast blood into a madman. Yeah,
Jean Baptiste. Denise the doctor, okay, and he Um. The
madman started to sweat and vomit and urinate the color
of chimney soot, and I guess the doctor said, yep,
he's a madman, and then he gave him another transfusion
(06:32):
after that after Yeah, and then the guy died and
actually Denise was charged with murder for that and he
was forced to quit medicine. Man, it was very very scandalous, um,
even though he was experimenting on a madman, which you
know at the time was pretty much fair game for anything.
I think the horrific accounts of the whole thing really
(06:53):
kind of captured the national imagination and as a result, um,
the Decree of Chalet was shoot by the French monarchy
that basically said oh no, no, no no, no more transfusions
and uh for a while, like basically a hundred and
fifty years this it was banned in France and the
(07:14):
effect that it had kind of extended over the continent.
It was basically de facto banned throughout Europe because these
horrible experiments by Denny's and others that had these terrible results.
It was like, you guys, this is mad science, and
you can't do that anymore because it's a really bad news.
France also banned ketchup when like three years ago the
(07:36):
band catch up, but chats up around still now. They
didn't ban the spelling of ketchup, they banned the condiment
in school cafeterias, and um, I think a lot of
people were put it on like uh, French cuisine, like
they don't want to catch up on their cuisine. But
it had to do with the sugar, yeah, the sugar intake.
(07:58):
But they said it's okay for French fries, which they
just called fries over there, exactly Fritz. I think so
they band catch up and then a long time ago
they banned blood transfusions. That's right, thank you, Franz. That's right.
And it stayed that way for a long time. I
mean there were doctors here and there in the nineteenth
century that that experimented around a little bit, of course. Yeah.
(08:20):
Well the Decree of shell it was sixty eight and
it really was prohibitive until the mid nineteenth century, the
early nineteenth century. Well, and that's when the guy named,
a physician in Britain named James Blendell was tired of
seeing his patients died during childbirth bleeding out like you
were talking about. Yeah, he's one of the heroes of
(08:40):
the story, he is. And he said, you know what,
there's got to be a better way, and let me
try and and you know, let me try and put
blood that's not an animal into someone. Yeah. The thing
that Blendell figured out was that the great error that
the early French doctors were doing was using the blow
out of a brute. As he put it, that don't
(09:02):
mean a jerk, right right, means an animal. He guys, like,
just let me watch my rugby. Um, the mixing like
the blood of one species with another. Blendell decided was
just a really bad move and that that's what it
caused these horrible reactions. Really good start, right, So human
human blood, he decided would should work, it would possibly work,
(09:24):
And he faced an immediate problem, which was, you have
no means of getting blood out of somebody and into
somebody else at this point, blood hell, what are you
gonna do? So he invented a contraption for it, like
the first blood transfusing contraption was invented by James Blendell
for this very recent Yeah, And he got some dogs
and he practiced on them, and uh, I have a
(09:45):
bad feeling that some of those dogs probably died. I
would guess along the way. But um he he eventually
got to a guy that was bleeding to death, and
I guess. The guy was like, um, doctor, I'm bleeding
a lot, and could you take some of that blood
and put it back into me? But because that might
be a good idea, because I'm told it's important, like
(10:07):
chimneys in the Yeah, let's just go for this, and
he did. Then the guy died. Well yeah, but it
was two days, which wasn't too bad. So I guess
he was like, he didn't see vomit or charcoal sut urine, right,
And the guy did say he was feeling less fainty.
So it did revive him for two days. That's a
(10:28):
great prognosis, I think. But because he didn't see all
those awful reactions immediately, he was sort of onto something.
Even though the guy died, he was encouraged by the results, right, Yeah,
so he went on to perform I believe ten more
blood transfusions and um the result, says the the author
(10:52):
of one of the articles we used for research, Carl Zimmer,
who wrote a great article in Mosaic about blood types UM.
As he put it, the results were dismal. Four out
of the ten survived. It's not too bad. I'm kind
of like, if this guy is just shooting in the dark,
mixing human blood together, and yeah, he's doing okay. But
(11:13):
what he what he proved was that you can take
human blood and transfer it from one human to another.
But there's still something we don't know, like what it
should be a hundred percent success rate? What's the problem here?
And he never lived to see the answer to it.
But it was Carl land Steiner who who figured it
out before them, because because blood Dell's success rate was
(11:37):
still pretty low and he was working in the twenties
something like that. In the mid nineteenth century, there was
a weird little um sidetrack that took place the milk Yeah,
in in North America and Canada. In the United States,
doctors decided that milk would be a better substitute for
(11:58):
transfusions than blow. Yeah. Were they mixing milk into the
blood or were they just injecting milk directly into the
blood stream. Here is some sheep's milk, um goat. It
looks or smells or taste nothing like human blood, but
let's give it a shot. They're thinking was that the
fats in the milk would be converted into white blood
(12:19):
cells and then into red blood cells in the blood stream.
So um, not even close. They tried with They tried
with cow, they try with goat, and then eventually they
try with human milk. And they were doing like massive
doses and stuff like twelve ounces a beer bottles worth
of goat milk injected directly into the human blood stream,
and the results were really really bad. Um. One patient
(12:42):
suddenly experienced unstagamous, which is uncontrollable like eye movements and
vertigo and spasms like immediately upon injected. And they're still
they're they're giving more injections. Some of them were like, Okay,
this is gonna work too much, right, So people were
slipping into comas and dying, and finally everyone was like,
(13:05):
this is wrong, this is not good. Let's stop doing this,
and they started using sailing. Yeah. You know who also
used injected milk, oh, Michael Jackson. That was a totally
different kind of milk based right, what's the name of
that stuff? We never get it right, but I think
it is prop think you just got it right, man,
(13:25):
So sad one. And it is a little side note.
One of the patients was given milk and then does
support that injection. They were injected with morphine and then whiskey.
So they're just basically putting anything they wanted to into
the blood streams of people back then. That's crazy. So
the point is this, Chuck, There was a little sidetrack.
And the reason there was a sidetrack is because still
(13:46):
even after Blundell's experiments were successful in some cases, blood
transmissions still had a really bad name. Yeah. Um, they
started to kind of figure it out a little bit though,
uh in at least what the problem him was when
they started to mix blood from different people together in
test tubes and they saw clumping, they saw red blood
(14:08):
cell sticking together, and said, you know what, um, the
reason why this is happening is because these are all
from sick people. That was their explanation at first, Like,
we got a bunch of sick blood, we're mixing it
with sick blood, so that's why it's doing all these
funky things. And it wasn't until the Landstoner came around
and said, you know what, maybe I should try to
(14:29):
mix the blood of healthy people together and see what happens. Yeah,
see if that landmark idea? Yeah, because I mean they
knew that blood clumped, that's one of the reasons they
went to milk, but they just thought it was because well,
you're stick already, there's nothing that could be done about that.
But yeah, when Landsteiner came along and thought that it
was groundbreaking, and he did it with his own blood
(14:50):
and with the blood of some of his lab assistants,
and he just started taking blood samples and then just
randomly mixing together people's blood to see if it clumped,
and when it didn't clump, he started mapping his patterns
and ultimately came up with what's now known as the
A B O blood typing group. Although initially he came
(15:10):
up with type A, type B, and type C. Yeah,
and then later on we found out about A B, right,
and C was changed to Oh yeah, but it was.
I mean, it's pretty crazy that he could even I mean,
he separated his plasma from his red blood cells. It's
it's nuts that he was even able to do that.
Back then, I didn't know things with that advance. Oh,
(15:31):
you just inject some morphine and whiskey into your blood
and man, it just kind of falls to the side. Uh.
Plasma by the way, you hear that word a lot.
You may not know what it is. It's just mostly water.
It's the liquid portion of your blood. That's what it's
the taxicab. Basically, it carries everything around. It carries the
red blood cells, among other things, hormones, waste, nutrients, all
sorts of stuff. So this is like a really really
(15:54):
really big advancement in medical science. Yeah, but what did
he say? Oh, he had a great quote. Is my favorite,
Like this landmark discovery and He's kind of like, well,
you might just want to look at this, he goes
it might be mentioned that the reported observations may assist
in the explanation of various consequences of therapeutic blood transfusions.
Like it's possible that this is what's been killing people
(16:17):
all the time. There's blood types. I don't know his
personality though, so I don't know how to read that.
It sounds a little smarmy. I I took it as
he was being very humble. Oh that's how I took it.
That's because you're a positive that's right. But what this
did was um millions of millions and millions, I mean,
(16:38):
I opened the door for everything to come when it
comes to blood typing. And after this break, we're going
to get a little bit into what these blood types aren't,
what they mean. All right, we're back and we are
(17:06):
talking about blood types and what this means. And it's
really pretty simple. It is. It's elegant on your red
blood cells. Um you have you can have lots of things,
but you can have sugars and proteins, and those sugars
and proteins can be expressed as antigens and antigens are
(17:27):
something that your immune system says, Hey, you got a
foreign invader coming, you might want to do something about it. Right,
It's something that you're a body can take as a
foreign invader, even if it's not a foreign invader, or
even if it's not harmful, But it's something that's found
on the surface of your red blood cells. Like pollen
is an anergen. We talked about that in the Allergy podcast.
(17:48):
So a blood type at its core is just a
description of what kind of anergen is found on the
surface of your red blood cells, right, which is just
a sugar or a protein, right, Penny. So if you're
if you have A type blood, you have the A
antigen present on your cells. If you have B type blood,
you have the B antigen. If you have O type blood,
(18:11):
you have neither A nor B. And then if you
have a B you have both A and B antigens
present on on the surface of your blood. Sounds pretty simple.
There's no real issues here except that blood types are
also associated with the type of antibody your blood produces
your body produces, right, that's right, And that's a protein
(18:32):
that your immune system uses to attack antign invader or
what it thinks is a foreign invader. So, if you
have type A blood, your body produces B antibodies, which
means that when your body comes in contact with type
BED antigens, which would be found on type B blood cells, right,
(18:53):
your body goes crazy and launches an immune response and
attacks those antigens, which is in the other way around
in that case with A and B. Yeah, they don't
like each other, No, they don't. So not only do
they have opposing and egens, they have opposing antibody. So
if you make say and B blood together, bad bad
things are going to happen. Yeah. And you know what,
you can also be allergic to your own blood, which
(19:14):
is not good. When we talked about mistaken identity, Uh,
that is something called hemolytic anemia and um immune hemolytic anemia,
and that's it sounds immediately like I thought, well, you're
dead if you've got that because your blood is allergic
to itself. Yeah, apparently people live with it are able
to almost everyone does. It's really rare to lead to
(19:35):
death these days. UM. I did look it up though,
and the first symptom it listed was feeling grumpy, which
I thought was like, well, perhaps we all have it
or he or has immune anemia. Um. So, like we said,
A and B do not like each other at all.
I think you said they're like the hat Fields and
the McCoys of blood types. Yeah, I mean they're in
(19:57):
a complete opposition to one another. That's right. Type OH
though is different so TYPO everybody it does. It doesn't
have any anigens on it on the blood cell surface.
So as far as blood transfusions go, you could take
TYPO and give it to type B people, Type A
people and TYPO people and even type A B people,
(20:20):
which makes type O the universal donor, right, oh negative specifically,
But that sounds all great and it is. But because
it doesn't have anigen's, it uh produces anybody's against A
and B antigens I'm sorry, antibodies against and B anogens, okay,
which means it can only accept oh transfusions, Yeah, which
(20:41):
is said because it's they're the universal donor, they can give,
but they can't. They can only get from other oaths
because they have antibodies against everything. But ohs right, A
B is the opposite of Oh. They're actually the universal recipient, right.
They have the A and B antigen on the surface
of the red blood cells. But like you said, they
(21:04):
are the universal recipient, so that's great. They don't have
any anybody's at all. So they can they can take
A they can be they can take oh, but they
have the antigens A and B, so A B or
OH can't take a B blood, so they just take
take take to recap. I'm sure I have a B blood.
(21:26):
I'm positive of it, you think, yeah, to recap. There's
a handy little chart here which we do not have.
Um no, but it's from the American Red Cross. Webon
like I think everyone that works at the Red Cross
probably has is printed out, like in their wallet. I'm
so everyone who's listening to this in the Red Cross
share it with somebody. Group OH, though can donate red
(21:48):
blood cells to anybody. Group A can donate red blood
cells to ais and a B S. Group B can
donate red blood cells to bees and a bees in
Group A B can donate to other A B is
but can receive it from all others. Take take take
pretty neat um, So there you go. That's the type
A BO blood type and it's pretty. It was a
(22:10):
sweeping discovery and that's it, right. No, more about blood types. No,
this is the end, beautiful friend, it is not the end.
Uh No, because it turns out the A, B O
blood typing or blood groups are really one of many
twenty two we're up to by now. Yeah. Remember earlier
I was talking about UM positive or negative. Well that too,
(22:31):
but I was talking about the dog tags. Yeah, I
was talking about that, sugars, booms, sugars. Yes, Sugars and
proteins are the two different antigens that you can have
on your red blood cells. We said that the A, B,
O U grouping are the sugars, so that leaves the proteins,
and that's where you get into the r h uh
(22:52):
If you've ever heard your blood as negative or positive.
That was named after the Reesus monkey spelled r H
E s U s, which they were obviously the test subjects.
It basically just says, if you're positive for that protein
or negative for that protein. Yeah, it's just it's another
anogen and either you have it or you don't, so
you can be oh negative, oh positive. So that would
(23:13):
mean that you are in the O type blood group,
so you have sugar anogens on or you know, you
don't have A or B on your blood cell surface.
But if you're positive, you would have neither A or
B on your surface, but you would have the recess
anogen on there. Right, And just like the A, B
O types, the r H types don't mix either. Know.
(23:34):
As a matter of fact, there's a really terrible condition
called mother fetus incompatibility, which the means the mother is
RH negative and the baby is RH positive. So as
the baby is developing, it's blood cells that carry the
r H anogen are taken as foreign invaders by the
mother's blood, so the baby, the fetus is attacked by
(23:56):
the mother's immune system. Not a good position for a
fetus to begin. But this is also very treatable these days. Yeah,
I got the impression. Yeah, I looked into what it
used to be a really scary thing, obviously, but now
they know how to treat it. And I think on
the first your firstborn, it's not really a big deal
at all. Oh yeah, and the reason why because the
(24:17):
blood is not mixing right right. Well, No, that first exposure,
your body is like, what the heck is this? It
gets caught off guard. Second one, it's kind of like,
fool me once, Shame on you, fool me twice, I'm
gonna get you, and it goes after the fetus and
then it just gets this immune response gets more and
more heightened with each pregnancy. I'm almost positive that's the case.
(24:38):
I ran across it during UM during research for this,
and if I'm not mistaken, that's what happens. Okay. Well,
I know roughly of the population is r H positive,
so you have much more likelihood to be RH positive
than negative. Okay in life, huh, I know that I
would have guessed negative I would be more common. I
(25:03):
don't know. I just guess that you need to improve
your outlook my friends. UM. So, the r H blood groups,
the A, B O blood groups. There two of UM
I think twenty two at least total blood groups that
have been identified. There's other ones like Diego, kid, kill,
Duffy blood groups, and all of them are descriptors of
(25:25):
anergens that can be found on the surface of a
person's red blood cells. So your blood type can go
far beyond a positive or OH negative. It can be
like a negative Duffy positive kill UM to the third power.
Who knows why not, But it's just basically the presence
(25:50):
or the absence of these different anigens and these combinations
can form the thing is we now know and Landsteiner
figured it out early on, but didn't didn't discover that
actual mechanism. But we know that each one is is
controlled by a different gene or a mutation on a
specific gene. And like I said, Landsteiner kind of figured
it out early on that it was heritable, that blood
(26:12):
types are heritable, and as a result blood typing where
it was used in early paternity tests, like almost from
the outset of Landsteiner's research. Um. The other thing that
they found out was that you can also be a
that sounds a little gross, a secretor or a non secretor,
which means that if you're a secretor, your antigens can
(26:33):
be secreted into other fluids like saliba or mucus in
your body toward off other infections, usually at the surface
of the skin. Yeah, so you're I think are secretors
in the United States And that's just another subclassification even
to rule people out. Um quickly, you're a secretor non secretor. Yeah,
(26:57):
ah lois a secretor got us a great idea. He's
secreting all over the place. Um. So like you said,
land Uh, the Landstoner determined that you could test maternity
and because of that in the ninet nineties, that led
to the discovery of that A B O gene. And basically,
if you can have that A antigen be expressed, or
(27:20):
if something is a little tweaked, you can have that
B antrogen expressed, right, or if they're both tweaked, you
can have both A B I think in that case
you inherit the A mutation from one parent and the
G mutation from another parent. Yeah, did you say G
B the gene there's another blood type, the A G.
(27:41):
I just came up with it. Uh. And then if
it's completely shut off, then that is where you get
your OH blood type. Right. But we have to point out, um,
that the A B O blood type isn't like the
A is the presence of a egine. B is the
presence of an engine, and OH is the presence of nothing.
It's not the case. Um Again. Carl Zimmer in that
(28:02):
mosaic article put it like, if the A antigen is
like a two story home in one former fashion, and
the B antigen is like a different type of two
story home, the OH is like the single story ranch
that the second stories are built on top mid century modern. Yeah,
to love. It's my preference in houses. I like those two. Um,
(28:25):
I wonder what I wonder what blood type the double
wide trailer is. I don't know. It's a single story,
so technically would be oh as well, there's secretors for sure.
So Chuck, um we talked. You said that RH positive
was the most common for the r H blood type. Right,
that's right. What's the most common for A B O types? Uh? Well,
you've got OH is the most OH positive is the
(28:46):
most common H. Then you've got A, then you've got B.
Then you've got a B as the least common, and um.
Across ethnic groups, it's uh, it's pretty interesting. Hispanic folks
have higher number of os. Asian folks have a higher
higher number of bees. And there's reasons for this, which
we'll get into later. They're pretty interesting, I think. So, um,
(29:10):
all the teaser we should say with when you do
we've kind of touched on what happens when you mix blood,
remember the chimney sit urine um. But the real on
the molecular level, on the cellular level, what's going on
when you mix blood types is that the antigens present
in one blood type that doesn't mix with another one
(29:31):
attracts the antibodies. Yeah, because it thinks it's some foreign invader. Yep.
So it's like the troops. You're coming into a house
that has anybodies that are primed against the engines on
your blood right right, and um, those anergens or those
antibodies surround the anergens and just kind of collect and
clump around the red blood cells. That's a glutination. Yeah.
(29:53):
That Uh, that just sounded gross to me. It does.
It's a gross word. I think medical. I think I
figured out medical terms that have gs and them and glug. Yeah,
it just sounds kind of gross because what happens after
a glutination is it coagulates. Yeah, and that thickened blood
is tough to pump through your body. It's pretty simple, really.
(30:16):
You give blood clots everywhere and you have trouble breathing,
your lungs filled with blood and you drown in it.
And again you're if if you're injected with cow milk,
your eyes go crazy and you spas them in some
new coma and die. But if not, you're just gonna
drown in your own turnal bleeding in your lungs. But
(30:36):
what's going on is the result of a massive immune
response launched by your body because of the presence of
what it takes as a foreign invader. If you take
the blood of somebody with the same blood type as yours,
even though it comes from another person, entirely your blood
is used to the antigen present on that blood type
because that's the one that produces itself, and it just
(30:58):
thinks it's more of the same blood that it produced
in your body. That's right, So this is all super interesting.
Uh I guess after this break we're going to talk
a little bit about why we have blood types and
where they came from to begin with. Al Right, before
(31:30):
the break, my friend, we were talking about what are
blood types come from? It's true, that was the title
of the segment. Well, I had no I don't even
know what that accident was or who that was supposed
to be. It was the one group that you can
make fun of now, which is this non existent when
(31:51):
you just made the indefinable group thinking about that the
other day, is there anybody Germans you can make fun
of Germans? Still, right? And you can make fun of
white men? Oh yeah, because like the n asking for
it for millennia totally. Yeah, there's nothing you can say
to a white man that is, you know, truly offensive.
It's true. Yeah, I guess it is, sad man. This
(32:12):
just took a really surprising n I remember my sociology
teacher in college that taught as that. Yeah, because they
he was putting up bad words about different races and
ethnic groups and sexes. And he's like, you might notice something.
He's a there's no word that you can call a
white man that is truly truly offensive. And really there
really isn't. I mean, a d bag, I guess, but
(32:32):
that's not offensive. You're just either that or you're not.
It's the truth or it's not. All right, So let's
get back to blood types. Where did it come from?
I know who it is. It's Balky bar taka mos.
I can't make no. He was from an unknown country, right, yeah, yeah,
there you go. All right. So primate species, my friend,
(32:55):
we found out that primate species had blood that you
could make with human blood. It wasn't a cow, it
wasn't a sheep, but primates because they're closer relatives than
cows and sheeps does well, that's what that was the assumption,
but it's still scientists were kind of scratching their heads.
They're like, oh, wait a minute, and what are we
(33:15):
to make of this? Because it suggests two things. It
suggests that either blood types are so old that they
predate human and uh like chimps and girls, so we
we share some sort of common ancestor that have blood
types itself, or that blood types evolved independently in different species.
(33:38):
Because it's like such a great idea, right right, Either way,
they still said, well, what are these things for? Yeah,
And some people for a long time said that, oh,
was the original the O G blood type, Yeah, which
makes sense because it's the simplest one. Yeah. And they
thought that, you know, our original ancestors in Africa had type.
(34:00):
Other people thought A B might have been the original
because um it evolved into a B and O, which
that sort of makes sense to and one lens right
and then is broken down into its constituent. But neither
one of them, it turns out, are probably true. Right. Well,
we we honestly don't know. We just there's first of all,
(34:20):
not all of the primates genes have been surveyed, so
we can't really say, but they've looked into a lot
of them. They have UM and the results are still
just kind of baffling. Like guerrillas just have type by UM.
I think chimps have type A and O. But that's it. Uh.
We we don't quite know what to make of it.
We do know that it's not just primates that have
(34:41):
blood types. Cats and dogs both too. Yeah, and I
never thought about it that you can have your cat
or dog if you want to feel really good about yourself. Yeah,
but really piss off your animals. You can take them
in and have them give blood. Yeah, there's animal dog
like dog and cat blood banks. Yeah, there's one right here. Indicator.
(35:01):
Consult your vet. Huh yeah, consult your vet, piss off
your cat, take them in to give blood, and explain
to them what a great thing they're doing, right right,
Just wear like leather falconry gloves while you're doing it.
It is a great thing to do. But yeah, it
just never occurred to me. Of course, that's what you
need to do as a responsible pet owner, right, I
(35:21):
guess maybe start with donating your human blood first, and
then once you got that down, pat bring your dog
into the mix. Well, you have to go to a
special dog and cat blood bank. Yeah, can tell your vet.
And I think if I looked at a my all
mine are too old, which is sad. I think you
can't be over seven. Well at least did the one indicator.
Maybe there's different looking for spry blood, I guess. So, yeah,
(35:44):
it's very sad for me. My guys. Um, so here's
a neat thing, though, Josh. Blood types aren't even said
in stone necessarily they can change, and it's mind blowing
it is. And I found this really neat. Uh, well,
a couple of neat things. One is not only can
it change, We'll go and explain how it can change naturally. Well,
our old friend epigenetics, Um, what was that episode we did,
(36:08):
can your can my Grandfather's diet short in my Life?
One of our best? Yes, it was, And no one
has any ideas about epigenetics because of the title. But
if you are looking for an epigenetics episode, go listen
to that one. But basically, because of changes in the
way genes are expressed, if your say, a mutation on
your gene is shut down epigenetically, then all of a
(36:31):
sudden over time, because red blood cells have about a
four month life span and bloods is constantly regenerating itself. Um,
you will turn into an OH blood type person within
your lifetime. You may not even notice, and until you
get a blood transfer, then you're gonna notice. But I
imagine that are good friends at the Red Cross test
(36:51):
blood type that kind of thing with each donation and
just leave it to to presumption. I don't think we
even pointed out they to test this. They still is
a similar method of mixing blood and scene if it clumps,
the same thing that the Landstoner did way back in
the day. So I found another couple of cool things. Though, Um,
this is from two years ago and I couldn't get
anything more recent. I think it is still under review.
(37:15):
But they think now that they can actually not synthetically,
but just not naturally change your blood type two oh
to make you. And this would be great because if
you could change blood type and this is in the body,
this is in the blood bag, change it from a
B two oh, then that means, all of a sudden
you have a more valuable blood because it's more universally accepted. Uh.
(37:39):
And what they've done is um, of course it was
the University of Copenhagen Professor Einrich Calaussen. They're always doing
the best work, it seems like. Um. So they found
they studied different types of fungi and bacteria and found, uh,
they're looking for proteins that could help, and they found
two that could help. One was called Elizabeth Kenya men
(38:03):
in go specate them septicum. Nice. My guess is that
Professor Erorich either has a daughter or a wife named Elizabeth. Yeah,
who's like, I got a bacteria or he's in big trouble. Uh.
And then the other one is Bacteriosis fragilus and basically
those two yielded enzymes that remove those A and B antigens. Yeah,
(38:26):
they just sheered those sugars off. They go in and
made it the O type. So I don't know where
that's at now, but that was just from two years ago. Uh.
And then this this case of this girl that doctor
say is a one in six billion event. At nine
years old, she got a liver transplant. And everyone knows
when you get an organ transplant, getting it to take
(38:47):
is a big deal. Uh, not having it rejected. And
what they do is they give you medication, usually for life,
to make sure it stays not rejected. What they found
with her was that when she got her new liver,
the drugs actually made her sick, the ones to keep
her from rejecting it. And what they found when they
tested her blood was that her body was changing its
(39:08):
blood type and completely changed its blood type to where
she didn't need those drugs anymore. It changed from OH
negative to oh positive, right, and she completely went off
those drugs. And I think she's like twenty years old now,
and the doctors I don't think they have any explanation
for it other than I guess this can happen. Her
body was like like the kind of local tough that
(39:31):
fights with pool queues or something like that. You know.
I was like, all right, just what I gotta do.
I gotta do what I gotta do keep this liver. Uh.
So that's pretty awesome. Yeah, that was super awesome. One
in six billion. It's pretty nice to have that quantified
for you. You know. I bet she feels like a
lucky lady. So, Chuck, we've kind of laid out by
(39:51):
now that blood types are confounding science still um but
there are some guests, some assumptions about why we have them,
Although that is the that is still the question that
plagues blood researchers. Why do we have blood types. Well,
you'd think it was because, you know, because they're fighting
off uh, blood born invaders. Like, that's why we have them.
(40:14):
But that doesn't explain why we have different ones, right exactly.
And then what confounds that even further is the fact
that apparently some blood types actually increase your susceptibility to
some blood born invaders. Yes, so some blood types help
certain fight certain diseases and not others. And like you said,
then there are others that make you more susceptible. Yeah,
(40:35):
and not only in the case of like where oh,
not having this a antigen makes me more susceptible because
the a antigen fights off say I think malaria more.
It's not even the case of that. In some cases,
having an antigen proves to be food for certain kind
of um germs and bacteria that cause illness actually binds easier. Yeah,
(40:59):
it binds or they eat like the sugar of the
protein and they just go attack your body. Like it's
like food, Like your blood type is food to certain
kinds of diseases that make you terribly sick. Right, So
from an evolutionary standpoint, those things should not exist. Yeah,
the only thing to me that makes sense is when
you included this word in here, which is variation, And
(41:23):
that to me makes sense because variation is generally pretty
good for a population, right, because it covers more bases. Uh.
And in this case that maybe why I mean they
have found Kevin Kane, this guy. University of Toronto did
a lot of investigating on this and found that, like
you said, it was, Type OH protects against malaria better.
(41:46):
Type A makes you more susceptible to pulp smallpox. Type
B you're more likely to be infected by E. Coli.
So it's just you should know what your blood type
is and what you're more likely to get and not get. Yeah,
would think. And again remember we said that UM that
some some anergin service binding sites for certain kinds of bacteria.
(42:08):
Same thing with the neuro virus UM, which has nothing
to do with your bloods seem to make any sense
at first at first, until you find out that not
only does UM do the does your body express your
blood type anogens on the surface of your red blood cells,
it also expresses them on the surface of the cells
that line your gut. And neuro virus has had a
(42:29):
lot to do with your gut. So specifically, I think
if you're Type OH, you UM have basically what accounts
what amounts to a landing pad for UM neuro virus
to bind too, and you are really going to be
hating it compared to everybody else on the cruise ship
that has Type A B or A B or if
(42:51):
your type OH, you might get a ruptured Achilles tendon
or an ulcer a little more easily, and that weird. Yeah,
they've linked a lot of a lot of susceptibilityy to
illness is two different blood types, So infections, cancers, memory loss,
heart disease get this. Type A blood types are most
most susceptible to stress, which makes a lot of sense
(43:13):
because the type of personality is like, I don't think
those are l go go go, let's get things done
kind of thing type. But that's not what you know.
We don't know. Uh. All this ignorance though lead to
a discovery, while it didn't lead to but it's exemplified
by the discovery in ninety two and Bombay UM patients
(43:37):
that didn't have a B O blood type at all confounding.
It's called the Bombay phenotype and it was discovered in
the fifties, and basically it's um. It's really rare. It's
again Carl Zimmer comes in to say, if owes that
single story ranch and A is two story and b's
a two story house, then this Bombay phenotype is an
(43:59):
empty vacant lot. Yeah, like these are the guys that
have nothing there. Yeah, as far as goes and uh,
in India, you're about one in ten thousand. You have
one inten thousand chants of having this UM blood type,
and one in four million in the world. But the
thing that's confounding about is these people don't appear to
(44:20):
be any more or less fit or healthy than people
in the A B O blood group. Yeah, it's just
if you need that blood, you're in bad shape. Yeah,
you have to get Bombay because I think uh, I
think blood has a shelf life of about forty two days.
So I mean imagine places like India and Bombay especially,
they probably have a lot more of this on hand.
(44:41):
But if you're traveling in the United States, maybe you
might have a bit of a time if you're bleeding out.
It was also a general hospital subplot, wasn't really I
was just poking around and it was like a leave
it to the soap opera to make that like the
rarest blood type a sub paternity subplot. That was how
(45:02):
they proved out fraternity for one of the somebody had
the Bombay phenixs. Yeah, they're like, it is you and
you're a secretory fuzz uh. So we've talked about how
the blood types are they make you more or less
susceptible of the disease, right. They think that that's one
of the reasons why UM. Different blood types appear in
(45:25):
different UM ethnic groups differently. They think that it's evidence
that in the not too distant evolutionary past, certain UM,
certain parasites or bacteria or germs or viruses that have
some sort of preference for a certain blood type passed
through an area and largely wiped out the people with
(45:47):
that blood type, left the other blood type standing. Yeah,
we were talking earlier about in China UM, and actually
in Russian and India two they have a lot more
blood type b UM, and that is because the bubona
plague and malaria outbreaks that swept through those countries not
too long ago and basically wiped out a lot of
the o's and a's. So you've got a lot more bees. Yeah,
(46:10):
this isn't This hasn't been proven in science. Things aren't
proven that there's more and more and more evidence that
backs it up. It seems to be a correlation. Yeah,
there is. And it's not just China, Russia, and India.
Africa has a lot of type uh oh people, which
is less susceptible than malaria UM, and Africa has a
(46:32):
lot of malaria. So it does make a lot of
sense that that's that's what happened. So even if the
reason we have blood types isn't because UM, it provides
a defense against defend blood borne um illnesses or whatever.
It's a function for sure of blood types. If you
(46:52):
want to not get teleological here, well who does teleologists?
Oh we'll finish up here with two uh examples of
well one example of HOKEM. One example that may or
may not be HOKEM, but it's probably HOKEM at the
very least. It's fun the blood type diet. There was
(47:14):
a natural path named Peter damont at Adamo Adamo I
actually funny enough. I was like, how do you pronounce that?
I found an old Regis and Kathy Lee. I don't
know if I would trust that. Well, he was standing
next to him, and he seemed to agree with it.
So usually though, when it's a di apostrophe, is just
(47:37):
dottamo and not diadamo. He didn't correct Regius. Well, who
does Kathy Lee? Oh, this is pre Kelly Rippa. Yeah,
it was Regis and Kathy Lee. Well, so she was drunk,
and just as Regis, all right, this is he is
a natural path with my wife calls a hokey pokey doctor.
(47:57):
And he published a very famous and popular book called
Eat Right for Number four Your Type, Eat Right for
Your Type UM seven million copies to date, sixty languages
has been translated into and he postulated that um our
blood types came along over the years, um as we evolved,
(48:18):
and that we should eat according to win our blood type.
What was going on when our blood type first came about? Right?
Like evolutionarily speaking exactly so like um the I think
he's he decided that the type oh blood type came
about during hunter gatherer era. Yeah, you're saying he decided
(48:39):
it's very key here, Yeah, I mean I don't know
what it was based on other than his guesses. Um,
but he and then he said type A was the
dawn of agriculture. Type B was from the Himalayan highlands
ten thousand and fifteen thousand years ago. And then he
said Type A B is a modern blending of Type
A and Type B. Pretty convenient. So if you, for example,
(49:00):
or type A, your blood type came about during the
hunter gather um days, and your your diet should consist
mostly of like raw vegetarian foods. Now, that's during the
dawn of agriculture. Hunter gatherer would be meat eaters. Oh sorry, yeah, yeah,
so that would be type Oh, it would be the
meat eaters, right. So Type A would be dawn of agriculture.
(49:22):
So you would eat um, Yeah, vegetables should he said,
like you yeah, type oh meat rich, no grains and
dairy type be lots of dairy um. Also called the
death diet right, and to avoid foods that aren't suited
to your blood type. And he did this. Um he said,
(49:43):
it will reduce infections and you'll lose weight and you
can fight cancer and I can sell books a lot
of books pretty much was the reason. And they've done
testing over the years, the Red Cross of Belgium did
a lot of people have and they've all said this
is not true. No, the Red Cross of Belgium did
a survey of a thousand studies and found no directive
(50:03):
and it's supporting the health effects of the A B
O blood type diet. End quote. But that's not to
say that these diets aren't good for you. For example,
that type A diet, it's basically vegetarianism. So of course
you're gonna lose weight, you're gonna lower your body mass index. Uh,
you you may, whatever you're going to. You're going on
(50:24):
a vegetarian diet. There, but none of these have to
do a blood type. No, Like, if you're a type oh,
go on the type A diet and you will see
those same benefits, same effects, So don't go on the
type B diet. So basically it seems like this guy
um just took some some pretty good diets except for yeah,
the type the type B diet is. Yeah, you'd a
bunch of fats and dairy. Although fats have gotten a
(50:46):
bad rap. Yeah, I mean not all fats are bad,
of course we know that. But but supposed diet is
not the one to go with. So that was hokum. Allegedly,
this I'm at the risk of respecting our friends in Asia.
I'm not gonna call this complete hokum. Well, they they
believe it pretty like like we believe it is. Actually
(51:06):
it's gonna say, like we believe astrology. A lot of
people here just have astrology is like a fun thing
to read. They really take it seriously in Japan apparently. Yeah, so, um,
I don't know what you would compare it to over here.
I don't even know that it has an analog astrology.
I guess, um, I guess the but the but yeah,
(51:27):
there's the distinction is is that like over there, more
people definitely take it as as fact. Yes, I'm saying
they take it way more seriously. But it's being born
with something that determines your personality type. So back in
the seven two kg, fur Fura Kawa, who is a
professor at Tokyo Women's Teachers School, he decided that blood types,
(51:49):
and this is based on his observations, blood types and
personality types were related somehow, and he started to do
some studies and he decided, I've got this figured out.
I I've got them mapped. I have type A, type
B type baby and type OH personality types map And
it actually caught on, uh, in the East big time
and still is today. And the Japanese actually have a
(52:12):
word for a type of harassment, say basically getting passed
over for a job or not getting into a certain
school based on your blood type. Yeah, buddhah, Yeah, is
that right? Is a good pronouncement. I think of pronunciation,
I couldn't even frown that up, but blood type harassment. Yeah.
And we'll go over these because it's, um, they're cute.
(52:34):
It's interesting. Um, if you're blood type A, you were
going to be kind and compassionate and put others before yourself.
You're calm on the outside, but you have a lot
of inner turmoil. Um, but you're a good listener, and
you're gonna have a lot of friends, and you get
along with others well. But it's typically at the expense
of your own sense of balance and happiness. You're just
(52:54):
giving a little too much. Yeah, you're not speaking up
for yourself necessarily in order to keep the peace. That's right.
That's type A. Yeah. Type B is the George Clooney
of blood types. Smug. No, he's not smug. What I
don't think he's smug. What it's like, it's defining characteristic.
I don't think he smug at all. Oh my god, really, yes,
(53:18):
I'm about a faint. No, I don't find him smug
at all. I think if you agree with someone, then
you probably don't find them smug. I agree with him
in a lot of ways. I think it's a really
cool thing to do to spend your money the higher
satellites to track war lords in Africa. That's about as
cool a thing as you can do with your riches
as anybody. Right, I still think he's smug. I don't
think he smugging. I can't like. I don't think he
(53:39):
can help it. I think we have different definitions of smug.
If you mean handsome and winning and charming, then yes,
he's smug. And being a hundred and ten percent aware
that you're handsome and charming and winning at any given moment,
down to the molecular levels. That's my definition of smug.
Awareness of your good looks. That yeah, over confident self
(54:01):
awareness is smugness. I'm on team Cleaney. I'm not opposed
George Claney. I just think I just can't imagine not
thinking you smug. Well, imagine it, baby, like I don't
even know you right now. Well, that's because I'm a
personality Type BE blood Type BE, like my buddy George,
that means I'm outgoing, in friendly. I'm a people person,
(54:22):
and I don't do that at the expense of my
own feelings. It just comes naturally, too, yeah, George. Whereas
like a Type A would like you're a people person,
but you really expend a lot of energy being a
people person. Type B. It's just like you said, it
just comes naturally. You're very adjustable. Uh, you're good at
a job if you have to deal with people. I
(54:42):
don't think we said that. Type A blood people don't
like to have jobs where they deal with other people. Right.
It gives examples of programmers, accountants, writers, librarians are good
jobs for Type A. Uh, and Type BE like Mr Cliney,
is not suitable for marriage because they're flirty and playful
and sm YEA, so say Korean women, that's right. Um,
(55:04):
you added the smug thing by the way at the end, Yes,
of course I did. That was pretty smug. Type A
B though they are freedom loving. Yeah, they're strong and rational.
They don't worry about the little things. Uh. They can
look at life's challenges with emotion removed and say this
is what I need to do to get past this.
(55:25):
So their psychopaths, uh, not necessarily. They seem to not
have issues with the relationships, and they're quite popular. They
seem to be the winningest personality group. I'm gonna go
a psychopath for that. I mean, I see what you're saying,
but yeah, I don't think so. Uh. And then finally
we have personality. Oh blood type. Oh, you're responsible and
practical and rule conscious. You're a great leader and very
(55:48):
determined to achieve your goals. You're physically strong, so you
might be a good athlete. Yeah, and they're most happy
with other typeos or type abes, and that are the
personality blood types. I've never heard of that. That's all
we know about blood time. I thought that was pretty neat.
I never heard that that was a big thing. Yeah,
you've me told me about that. I was like, we're
(56:09):
doing blood type. She's like, oh, you know about like
Japanese blood types, right, blood type personality type. Yeah, She's like,
you know, like George Clooney, smuck. You're like, we're meant
to be together. It's funny. We just hold hands and
watch monuments manners, just like, oh god, alright, Chuck. If
(56:31):
people want to know more about blood types, I would
steer clear how stuff works because it has one of
the densest, most incomprehensible articles I've ever read in my
life on this site about blood It really needs rewriting. UM.
This this thing you put together was great, Thank you.
I appreciate that. UM, and a lot of it was
based on a mosaic article by Carl Zimmer about blood types,
(56:51):
which I strongly recommend you go read. Uh. And since
I said Carl Zimmer, it's time for listener mail, UH
gonna call this truck drive and chemist, Guys. I was
a truck driver from O five to O eight and
listen to your show back then I left trucking to
go to college and I was taking chemistry. We had
to do a research paper on a compound, and so
(57:12):
I always want to know about diesel, so I looked
into diesel. We should do one on diesel. He says,
it sounds pretty interesting. UM, I learned it's some really
interesting thing about Rudolph Diesel's invention and about the man himself.
The original diesel compound was actually made from peanuts, and
he invented the engine for small plants. Uh was it
George Washington Carver, No, it was Rudolph Diesel. Um. He
(57:36):
uh invented it the engine UM for small plants that
could power um, not you know, biological plants like a
power plant. Yeah. Uh yeah, you could power a warehouse
to compete with the big industrial warehouses during the Industrial Revolution.
So he was a man of the people. But here's
the conspiracy theory part. Rudolph Diesel found out his diesel
(57:57):
engine was going to be powering Germany's newest warships called
Unta sea boots means under sea boats. Where are you
gonna say? Not that? Uh? And he was really angry
that they would use his invention for war. So he
told the German naval representative that if they were going
to use his diesel for war, he would take his
(58:19):
designs to England so they would have it too and
could counter Germany, and that Germany might as well not
use it. And they shot him on the spot. Basically,
he's not a smart thing to announce, No, he he
pushed all his chips in and lost. He told off.
The government boarded a ferry to England in the evening
to arrive in the morning. Uh. He left word to
wake him since he had an appointment with the Naval
(58:41):
Office in Britain, and when the ferry ducked the next morning,
he was gone. Eight days later, his body was found
floating in the English Channel. And this all happened a
few short years before World War One. Wow, I can't
believe that, like government agents would fascinate somebody when they
threatened to take a very important thing to another country. Yeah. Um,
(59:02):
so that sounds like a good podcast. He says. You
have a man fighting for the common man, man that
didn't like his Anvintioninis for war and engine we still
used today and could be using more in the future.
And that is from Russ Fortney. Russ, my friend, I
think you just did a little mini podcast. Thanks a
lot for that, man. I love I love history, me too,
(59:23):
love history. Never knew about Rudolph Diesel, no no idea.
I didn't even know somebody's last name. I just didn't.
It was a thing, you know, like Jimmy gasoline right,
or that Elizabeth bacteria Elizabeth bacteria. Jimmy, guess if you
want to tell us something that we don't know about
that will blow our tops because it's so cool, Like Russ,
(59:47):
you can tweet to us at s y s K Podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
You Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and, as always,
joined us on the web at our lugg sarious home
Stuff You snow dot com. For more on this and
(01:00:08):
thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.
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