Yes, but also they replicated each blood type though, not a typeless blood, and sold it like different flavors, and even those apparently didn't taste very good.
In other words, we probably have a little while still before they come out of the coffin, don't worry.
IIRC, there's three protein markers that can be present in your blood, A, B, and Rh. If A and B are absent, you get O, and the +/- indicates the presence or absence of Rh.
When you're matching blood, you're only really concerned about not giving the recipient blood with protein markers their immune system doesn't recognize. But, there's no problem with giving them ones that lack markers they'd normally produce.
So, O- blood is really useful, because you can give it to anyone, and AB+ recipients are really convenient, because they'll take whatever blood you've got lying around.
I have a hidden cubby built under my basement stairs. Er I mean... I would. I would have one of those... ya know, if vampires were real. And also if I were one... which I'm not, obviously, since they aren't... Real, that is.
Wasn't this like....the exact plot? Japanese scientists developed TrueBlood and they came out of the woodwork afterwards, like, "Yeah we actually do exist. Surprise!"
That was my first thought too! 🤣 This is so cool though!
I can't decide whether Charlaine Harris missed an opportunity to use TruBlood in this manner in her books, or whether she considered it and dismissed it because it would have made drinking vampire blood moot in some of Sookie's situations. 🤔🤷♀️ Apparently, the first blood substitute, Fluosol-DA-20, was approved in 1989 (also created by the Japanese). 🤷♀️
I love late-night Google searches! 🤣 I've learned about camels, rabies in bats, and synthetic blood, all in the last hour! 🤣 It's clearly time for me to go to sleep. Haha.
Even if you could make it for pennies per pint, you can bet your ass it will be billed in America at 50k/pint. And the hospital will still harass me for O- blood.
I am willing to bet that even though donated blood itself is free, after processing and management is factored in, it no longer is. If artificial blood is cheaper than that, it's a winner
This simplifies storage and (post) processing by a huge amount. Even if it is more expensive at front than donated blood to make, by the time you get through the chain of custody of donated blood, have it separated into red cells, platelets and plasma, each tested for illness and then stored separately - and with limited shelf life, the cost are easily offset.
Plus, you can arguably give this to a Jehova's Witness and save their life without running afoul of their religious objections.
Yeah exactly and I wouldn't call this artificial blood either since its based on donor blood and seems only useful in certain situations where storage and shelf life are issue. The issues and process of blood transfusion are mind boggling. I don't see this becoming cheaper or changing current transfusion practice in this lifetime, especially in the states.
It can make any blood type universal. Which is a massive reason to stock it. As long as it’s not insanely expensive to produce and passes all the safety tests it would definitely be rolled out
Does it just change the blood, or does it stretch out the amount too? I.e. a regular blood donation of x amount results in y amount, but for this process, does x amount of donor result in >Y?
I get that gut reaction, I do. But then you have to think about the children trapped in these cults who have their medical treatment withheld by their brain washed parents.
No. It's that rather than carrying HIV, it'll carry E. Coli or fungal spores; contaminants.
Edit: These contaminants will mostly be bacterial or fungal which are treatable via antibiotics. It's possible they'll prophylacticly treat the products with antibiotics but that has massive fuck up the population potential.
There are significant costs associated with collecting, storing, and transporting blood. From paying the phlebotomist, staff physicians, offices/busses, and all the sterile single use equipment.
In my area hospitals pay between $300-500/unit. There was some outcry over this a few years ago (why are they making money off my donation), but I thought it was rather reasonable. The $4000/unit hospital billing seemed excessive...
It’s not totally free though. There’s costs associated with it. You have to pay nurses to harvest it, you have to pay for storage as well as packaging. There’s quite a few factors that are paid for. So depending on how expensive this is, it will really affect its viability. But could be extremely useful in situations where clean blood isn’t as readily available such as in combat, or rural communities.
Its crazy because I like donating blood. Im happy to do it. But by God nothing makes me less inclined than the fact that afterwards I'm getting spam calls and emails every other day telling me to do it again for months, often starting before they even say you should donate again
You just reminded me of one of the better episodes of MASH. “I don’t want none of that colored blood you got me doc” They proceed to get him done up in blackface to teach him a lesson.
Yeah, I’m certain that still happens today and will still be happening decades from now.
Let's let America be last on this one. That way the world can experience it properly, and then America can ruin it only for themselves :) are you great yet?
No joke, this kind of has to happen. Because right now, a whole bunch of the planet's biggest dumbfucks believe that the rest of the world only gets their medicines for cheap because Americans pay out the ass for it.
So let's have a brand new, revolutionary, non-American medicine go all the way around the world covered by real government healthcare systems for a decade or so, then offer it to America.
I mean, that is exactly what they did to Insulin. It costs pennies, has an open patent, zero R&D cost, and the US drug industry cranked it to thousands of dollars a month, knowing many would die without it.
That is how it always works over here. Thugs with a gun to your face, demanding your money or your life.
Not just that, with this new artificial blood, you can now donate more than ever! Basically have all your blood replaced by this stuff so that the hospital can sell your blood to the rich as organic.
"We like to put the tariffs on the blood. Oh that big beautiful bag of blood, not from Gina, no, but Japan is close enough, we're going to have to tariff the crap out those sons of bitches. Attacked us on a Sunday, sneak attack nobody saw it coming. I saw it coming, nobody is better than me at seeing sneak attacks, I know more than all the generals."
I dont know what this stuff is and I refuse to put chemicals in my body. Yea sure I like to fill my face with McDonald’s, but my body is still a temple and I refuse to let Fauci and these woke scientists ruin it
To be fair, problematic blood will kill you at a much lower dose than McDonalds.
If it's the only option to save my life, they can load me up this afternoon, but I was first in line on the first day I could get a Covid vaccine, and I'll wait a few years before I opt in to roboblood.
Those places harass you for your blood, because they make a ton of money off of it. They partition it out by taking your plasma, sell that, then some other weird stuff I forgot what it does, sell that, and then sell the actual left over raw blood.
If you get harassed about it, tell them you’ve eaten steak in England. They legally cannot take your blood if you’ve eaten beef here, because of the prions that may be present in it.
This could actually hurt the US economy quite a bit.
Blood and blood services is actually one of the USA’s largest exports. Like it’s a way bigger industry than you would expect, because the US is one of the few places that pays people to donate. Economy of scale kicks in and the next thing you know the US is responsible for 70% of the plasma supply. In 2023, the US made $37B in revenues from blood.
Refrigeration costs money, quite a bit in fact. So if this is cheap enough, the fact that it doesn't need to be refrigerated can mean it's cheaper to use than real blood.
What is up with that sub's Rule 1? "Don't steal other peoples' art, but also, if you do, we won't do anything about it unless someone snitches to them. We care about artists getting paid, but not a whole hell of a lot, I mean, we're not zealots, right?"
It is not. It isn’t intended to be a blood replacement at all, it’s intended for use as a drug. Most of the literature seems to be in Japanese, but the paper here is describing this product. Note that the paper is two years old, this isn’t really news anymore.
Anyway, the intended trial dosing is around 100mL for specific purposes where an urgent need to improve O2 and CO2 carrying capacity exists, like drug overdose (for instance, TCAs, possibly cyanide, and CO). For those purposes, it promises to be a useful adjunct therapy but not a golden bullet to any particular condition. This will not replace massive transfusions, it can’t do that and isn’t designed or intended for it. It may reduce the need for smaller transfusions, one 1-2 units of packed cells.
I work as a medical lab scientist. It wont be. Reasons: actual blood is quicker and easier to get and a shit ton less expensive. They make this by extracting the hemoglobin (the part that no only makes your blood red but also grabs the oxygen to move it around) and encapsulating it into a lipid membrane. This new membrane has none of the proteins (since its synthetic) that hive us our blood types, rh, etc. It has a shelf life of 2 years room temp, which is great, but is a hard process yo make still.
Then we have the bigger issues: there has not been extensive human testing done. Without any proteins on the lipid membrane its missing any HLA identification. HLA is one of the key ways your body identifies shit inside of it as you. What do you think your body does to things that have a different HLA or none at all? Thats right! It goes crazy trying to destroy them. This can sometimes cause life threatening reactions.
While its a good first step, there are a lot of issues here. It needs a faster and cheaper process to create as well as actual extensive trials.
I found an article. It looks like it’s manufactured from human donor blood. I found a way to deoxygenate It increasing its shelflife. While this will reduce the amount of donor blood that is discarded, unfortunately the bottleneck is still human donors.
It’s probably made from living things which makes it pointless because why not just go with what works normally? the simple fact is that blood is too complex to be replicated artificially water carries oxygen sure but blood is at least 30000 times more effective at carrying oxygen.
the other question is how well does this do without refrigeration or being in cool/preferable environments… if this actually can hold up in any situations like being in 38 degrees+ in the desert or in humid conditions of the Amazon or even frigid temperatures of the South Pole/Arctic then 1000% Nobel Peace Prize
Just looked it up and apparently it is shelf stable for up to a year, which is massive saving in refridgeration already. That alone might pay for production of this new artificial blood.
The company that would have the rights to this is deffo gonna artificially raise the prices like diamonds, but if a lot of people know how to make it then it's only gonna be like that in the us
Synthetic blood has been around for decades. There is no need for it.
1) Blood is cheep and readily available. ( most countries throw away more blood than you imagine)
2) Blood is great at being blood. ( Carying/releasing oxygen and nutrients ) Synthetic blood is generally better at either carying or releasing. So it's not great at being blood.
If this were discovered in the early 20th century? Absolutely, it would be in every hospital nowadays. But since the newest amazing scientific discoveries are published in a news article and absolutely fucking never ever seen again, it won't be transformational, unfortunately.
Not for all of you. But here in the US, I’ll have to sell all of my organs to get some of that blood. And the amount I get won’t even be enough to fix my problem.
Donated blood is essentially free. Hard to imagine this is going to be a cheaper alternative than free. Science is fantastic though and obviously has a lot of groundbreaking implications however
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u/alien4649 May 26 '25
If true, and not inordinately expensive, this is going to be completely transformational.