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A Rare Antibody in James Harrison’s Blood Protected the Lives of 2.4 Million Australian Babies

I recently purchased from Amazon, but have not read, Good Blood, which describes the discovery of a cure, and the struggle for acceptance of the cure, for the RH disease sketched in the passages quoted below. The disease affected my family, but I am not sure I remember exactly how. I am Rh positive and I think my mother was Rh negative. I think with each child after me, there was increasing risk and worry of possible bad health effects.

According to the Amazon summary for Good Blood, the book also describes the devotion of master blood donor James Harrison, whose recent obituary is quoted below.

Starting at least in the 1960s medical experts were often optimistic that future medical advances would come from designer chemicals enabled by scientific advances in our knowledge of chemistry and biological processes. Taxpayer funding was devoted to that approach in Nixon’s War on Cancer. But fewer medical advances have come from that approach than hoped, and more advances than expected have continued to come from the evolved usable chemicals (sometimes poisons, sometimes antibodies) of plants, animals, and exceptional human beings like Mr. Harrison.

Mao is often misquoted as saying ‘Let a thousand flowers bloom,’ but someone should say it (at least if the cost of planting the flowers is not too high).

(p. A25) James Harrison did not much care for needles. Whenever he donated plasma, he would look away as the tip went into his arm.

But Mr. Harrison was one of the most prolific donors in history, extending his arm 1,173 times. He may have also been one of the most important: Scientists used a rare antibody in his plasma to make a medication that helped protect an estimated 2.4 million babies in Australia from possible disease or death, medical experts say.

“He just kept going and going and going,” his grandson Jarrod Mellowship said in an interview on Monday [March 3, 2025]. “He didn’t feel like he had to do it. He just wanted to do it.”

. . .

Mr. Harrison’s plasma contained the rare antibody anti-D. Scientists used it to make a medication for pregnant mothers whose immune systems could attack their fetuses’ red blood cells, according to Australian Red Cross Lifeblood.

Anti-D helps protect against problems that can occur when babies and mothers have different blood types, most often if the fetus is “positive” and the mother is “negative,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. (The positive and negative signs are called the Rhesus factor, or Rh factor.)

In such cases, a mother’s immune system might react to the fetus as if it were a foreign threat. That can lead babies to develop a dangerous and potentially fatal condition, hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn, which can cause anemia and jaundice.

. . .

In Australia, scientists from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne are working to create a synthetic version of the drug using what some have called “James in a Jar,” an antibody that can be made in a lab.

But for now, human donors are essential: The anti-D shots are made with donated plasma, and Mr. Harrison was one of about 200 donors among the 27 million people in Australia, Lifeblood said.

. . .

Mr. Harrison knew the importance of his work firsthand. At 14, he needed a lot of blood transfusions during a major lung surgery. The experience inspired him to donate and encourage others to donate, too.

For the full obituary, see:

Amelia Nierenberg. “James Harrison, Whose Rare Antibodies Helped Millions, Is Dead at 88.” The New York Times (Saturday, March 8, 2025): A25.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated March 7, 2025, and has the title “James Harrison, Whose Antibodies Helped Millions, Dies at 88.”)

The Good Blood book, mentioned above, is:

Guthrie, Julian. Good Blood: A Doctor, a Donor, and the Incredible Breakthrough That Saved Millions of Babies. New York: Harry N. Abrams Press, 2020.

Vindication is Sweet, Even 60 Years Too Late

When I was a child my mother would stick an oral thermometer in my mouth. When she returned she would always be annoyed with me, saying that I didn’t have it in right, because my temperature was too low. She would say with irritation: ‘Now this time do it right!’ So I would feel discouraged and would give the thermometer a hard jab into my mouth until it hurt. But my temperature would still be too low.

The story below suggests, decades too late for me, that maybe it wasn’t my fault. Maybe the official mandated “normal” temperature of 98.6 was wrong!

(p. D6) We seem to be getting cooler. Since 1851, when the standard was set at 37 degrees centigrade, or 98.6 Fahrenheit, the average human body temperature has steadily declined.

. . . . The analysis is in eLife.

. . .

. . . improvements in sanitation and improved dental and medical care have reduced chronic inflammation, and the constant temperatures maintained by modern heating and air conditioning have helped lower resting metabolic rates. Today, a temperature of 97.5 may be closer to “normal” than the traditional 98.6.

For the full story see:

Nicholas Bakalar. “Is 98.6 No Longer ‘Normal’?” The New York Times (Tuesday, January 21, 2020): D6.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Jan. 21, 2020 [sic], and has the title “Body Temperature 2.0: Do We Need to Rethink What’s Normal?”)

The academic paper in eLife, mentioned above, is:

Protsiv, Myroslava, Catherine Ley, Joanna Lankester, Trevor Hastie, and Julie Parsonnet. “Decreasing Human Body Temperature in the United States since the Industrial Revolution.” eLife 9 (2020): e49555.

Rickets Is Now Rare Because Vitamin D Is Easy to Get

(p. A15) Rickets is one of those diseases that seem incredibly old-fashioned. It’s difficult to comprehend, now, how widespread this bone ailment once was: In some cities less than a century ago, 90% of children showed symptoms of rickets during wintertime. But ubiquity has its benefits. In “Starved for Light,” Christian Warren convincingly argues that modern medicine would be unrecognizable without the many advances in treatment that trace their roots to this once-widespread disease.

Rickets results from a lack of vitamin D, which we need to help shuttle calcium and phosphorus into our bones. Our bodies manufacture vitamin D whenever ultraviolet sunlight hits our skin; we can also get it through food. A deficiency in vitamin D causes the softening and bending of bones characteristic of rickets; victims are often left bowlegged or knock-kneed, or with curved spines or misshapen pelvises. The worst cases leave babies unable to crawl or even sit up straight.

. . .

Given how disgusting cod-liver oil tastes, some countries began combating rickets by adding vitamin D to milk in the 1930s—an odd choice, since milk contains no vitamin D naturally. (Amusingly, Mr. Warren calls the practice an “in uddero” health intervention.) The choice seems even odder, the author wryly notes, when there’s a much simpler solution to preventing rickets: going outside for a few minutes. Instead, we’ve effectively turned “a dairy product into a drug-delivery device,” severing the ancient interplay between “sun, skin, and bone.”

For the full review see:

Sam Kean. “Bookshelf; A Disease Of Deficiency.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Dec. 9, 2024): A15.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 8, 2024, and has the title “Bookshelf; ‘Starved for Light’: A Disease of Deficiency.”)

The book under review is:

Warren, Christian. Starved for Light: The Long Shadow of Rickets and Vitamin D Deficiency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024.

W.H.O. Ignored Those Who Knew Covid Was Airborne

The article quoted below provides more evidence that the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) failed to protect world health during the Covid pandemic. Its funding and decision-making processes made failure highly likely.

In the absence of W.H.O, how can we learn quickly of potential pandemic threats from around the world? The Covid book co-authored by Ridley documents quick and effective Twitter (now X) networks that spread and evaluated Covid information. Maybe a proof of concept?

(p. D3) In early February 2020, China locked down more than 50 million people, hoping to hinder the spread of a new coronavirus. No one knew at the time exactly how it was spreading, but Lidia Morawska, an expert on air quality at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, did not like the clues she managed to find.

It looked to her as if the coronavirus was spreading through the air, ferried by wafting droplets exhaled by the infected. If that were true, then standard measures such as disinfecting surfaces and staying a few feet away from people with symptoms would not be enough to avoid infection.

Dr. Morawska and her colleague, Junji Cao at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, drafted a dire warning. Ignoring the airborne spread of the virus, they wrote, would lead to many more infections. But when the scientists sent their commentary to medical journals, they were rejected over and over again.

“No one would listen,” Dr. Morawska said.

It took more than two years for the World Health Organization to officially acknowledge that Covid spread through the air.

For the full story see:

Carl Zimmer. “Covid Proved Airborne. Could Bird Flu Be, Too?” The New York Times (Tuesday, February 4, 2025): D3.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date February 3, 2025, and has the title “Could the Bird Flu Become Airborne?”)

The book co-authored by Ridley that I praise in my initial comments is:

Chan, Alina, and Matt Ridley. Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19. New York: Harper, 2021.

Those Who Criticize the Powerful “Are Seldom Seen Distinctly by the Age in Which They Live”

Founding Father Benjamin Rush was apparently willing to take the ill-will that comes to those who challenge the lazy, incompetent, or corrupt.

The importance of being willing to be the target of ill-will was well-described by Charlie Munger.

(p. C7) During the spring of 1813, former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were united in grief at the death of a mutual friend who had recently persuaded them to forget their bitter rivalries. Like the two celebrated statesmen, the eminent physician and social reformer Benjamin Rush had been a Founding Father, one of 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

. . .

. . ., after George Washington’s beaten army was pushed back across the Delaware River and Philadelphia’s militia marched to his assistance, Rush volunteered his medical skills. He helped tend the wounded from the Second Battle of Trenton, on Jan. 2, 1777, and the next day witnessed the bloody aftermath of Washington’s victory at Princeton.

Months later, Rush was appointed surgeon-general of the Continental Army’s so-called Middle Department—a key geographical sector that included Pennsylvania. He had ambitious plans for reform and outlined them in a pamphlet titled “Directions for Preserving the Health of Soldiers.” In a statement true for future American wars, he observed: “A greater proportion of men have perished with sickness in our armies than have fallen by the sword.” To curb that toll, Rush urged radical changes in food, clothing and hygiene. In his improving zeal, he unleashed a barrage of unrestrained letters to his friends in Congress that swiftly kindled a feud with his superior, Dr. William Shippen.

Rush accused Shippen of neglect, incompetence and corruption but underestimated his antagonist’s political clout.

. . .

(p. C8) . . ., Rush himself had always suspected that his outspoken views would affect his reputation, observing: “The most acceptable men in practical society, have been those who have never shocked their contemporaries, by opposing popular or common opinions.” He added, with considerable prescience: “Men of opposite characters, like objects placed too near the eye, are seldom seen distinctly by the age in which they live.” Through the efforts of Mr. Fried and Mr. Unger, what Benjamin Rush characterized as “the distant and more enlightened generations” are now better placed to judge him.

For the full review see:

Stephen Brumwell. “American Hippocrates.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, May 20, 2017 [sic]): C7-C8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date Sept. 20, 2018 [sic], and has the title “‘Rush’ and ‘Dr. Benjamin Rush’ Review: American Hippocrates.”)

The books under review are:

Fried, Stephen. Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father. New York: Crown, 2018.

Unger, Harlow Giles. Dr. Benjamin Rush: The Founding Father Who Healed a Wounded Nation. New York: Da Capo Press, 2018.

F.D.R.’s Wage Controls Created a Wedge Between Patients and Doctors, With Awful Unintended Consequences

Under F.D.R.’s wage controls, firms competed for workers through perks, like healthcare benefits, since they could not legally compete by offering higher wages. That resulted in the first middlemen (in this case firms) between the customers (patients) and the suppliers (doctors). The result of adding the middlemen, and also adding a variety of regulations, is a “market” that is opaque, inefficient, and slow to innovate. Rather than drain the swamp, the response has been to add more middlemen (Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and Pharmacy Benefit Managers, aka PBMs), that have only thickened the mire.

(p. B11) The roots of today’s fragmented system can be traced back to a quirk in U.S. history. Unlike most high-income countries, which created centralized government systems to ration care in the 20th century, the U.S. followed a different path shaped by historical circumstances. During World War II, wage controls prompted employers to offer health insurance as a tax-free benefit to attract workers.

Medicare and Medicaid, followed decades later by Affordable Care Act exchanges, were added over time to cover those who couldn’t get insurance through their job, creating a highly decentralized and convoluted system. . . .

. . . the pressure to increase their earnings means insurers have looked for ways to overbill the government and skimp on patient care, always staying a step ahead of regulators. In recent years, they have become vertically integrated conglomerates, controlling doctors, pharmacies and payment-processing systems.

. . .

One of the most frustrating aspects of the system is a tactic called prior authorization, a process requiring providers to obtain insurer approval before delivering certain services. While that might be disagreeable, there is little public data on how often insurers deny care. This lack of transparency allows insurers to wield prior authorization aggressively, particularly when expensive treatments are recommended.

For the full commentary see:

David Wainer. “How to Fix Health Insurance.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024): B11.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date December 20, 2024, and has the title “How American Health Insurance Got So Infuriating.”)

In Europe Citizens Self-Medicated with Coca Plant Before Official Use in Hospital

Bones from the 1600s in a hospital crypt reveal the use of coca leaves, even though the records from the hospital do not record any use of coca leaves. The records do indicate the early use of derivatives of the opium poppy plant, so if coca leaves were being officially used, you would expect that would also be in the records. One of the researchers, Cristina Cattaneo, concludes that the coca plant was not an official medicine but was “something lurking among the population” (as quoted in Nazaryan 2024, p. D3).

The findings of Giordano are summarized in:

Alexander Nazaryan. “Cocaine Use in Europe Is Dated to the 1600s.” The New York Times (Tues., September 17, 2024): D3.

(Note: the online version of the Steve Lohr article was updated Sept. 13, 2024, and has the title “Europeans Used Cocaine Much Earlier Than Previously Thought, Study Finds.”)

The academic paper co-authored by Cattaneo is:

Giordano, Gaia, Mirko Mattia, Lucie Biehler‐Gomez, Michele Boracchi, Alessandro Porro, Francesco Sardanelli, Fabrizio Slavazzi, Paolo Maria Galimberti, Domenico Di Candia, and Cristina Cattaneo. “Forensic Toxicology Backdates the Use of Coca Plant (Erythroxylum Spp.) in Europe to the Early 1600s.” Journal of Archaeological Science 170 (Oct. 2024): 106040.

An earlier related academic paper, on evidence of early official use of derivatives of the opium poppy, is:

Giordano, Gaia, Mirko Mattia, Lucie Biehler-Gomez, Michele Boracchi, Stefania Tritella, Emanuela Maderna, Alessandro Porro, Massimiliano Marco Corsi Romanelli, Antonia Francesca Franchini, Paolo Maria Galimberti, Fabrizio Slavazzi, Francesco Sardanelli, Domenico Di Candia, and Cristina Cattaneo. “Papaver Somniferum in Seventeenth Century (Italy): Archaeotoxicological Study on Brain and Bone Samples in Patients from a Hospital in Milan.” Scientific Reports 13, no. 1 (2023): 3390.

For Quicker Cures, Do Not Cancel Those Who See What We Do Not See

Dogs smell odors that we do not smell. They say Eskimos can distinguish 40 or more kinds of snow. Physical differences in biology and differences in past experiences allow some people to perceive what other people miss. We should encourage, not cancel, those who see differently. They can communicate and act on what they see, giving us more cures more quickly.

In the passages quoted below, a case is made that Pasteur’s artistic experiences allowed him to see a structural difference (chirality) in crystals; a difference that turns out to matter for medical drug molecules.

(p. D5) In a paper published last month in Nature Chemistry, Dr. Gal explains how a young Pasteur fought against the odds to articulate the existence of chirality, or the way that some molecules exist in mirror-image forms capable of producing very different effects. Today we see chirality’s effects in light, in chemistry and in the body — even in the drugs we take.

And we might not know a thing about them if it weren’t for the little-known artistic experience of Louis Pasteur, says Dr. Gal.

. . .

As a teenager, Pasteur made portraits of his friends, family and dignitaries. But after his father urged him to pursue a more serious profession — one that would feed him — he became a scientist. At the age of 24 he discovered chirality.

To understand chirality, consider two objects held up before a mirror: a white cue ball from a pool table and your hand. The reflection of the ball is exactly like the original. If you could reach into that mirror, pull out the reflection and cram it inside the original, they’d match up point for point. But if you tried the same thing with your hand, no matter how much you tried, the mirror image would never fit into the original.

At the molecular level some objects are like cue balls, and they are always superimposable. But other things are like hands, and they can never be combined.

. . .

During winemaking, a chemical called tartaric acid builds up on vat walls. In the 18th and 19th centuries, makers of medicine and dyes used this acid.

In 1819, factory workers boiled wine too long and accidentally produced paratartaric acid, which had unique properties that intrigued scientists like Pasteur.

. . .

When studying the paratartaric acid, Pasteur found that it produced two kinds of crystals — one like those found in tartaric acid and another that was the mirror opposite. The crystals were handed, or what the Greeks call chiral (kheir) for hand.

. . .

“Several famous or much more accomplished scientists, some well along their illustrious careers, studied the same molecules, the same substances,” said Dr. Gal. “Realistically you would think they’d have beaten him to the punch, and yet they missed it.”

So why did this young, inexperienced chemist get it right?

Dr. Gal thinks the answer might lie in the artistic passions of Pasteur’s youth. Even as a scientist, Pasteur remained closely connected to art. He taught classes on how chemistry could be used in fine art and attended salons. He even carried around a notebook, jotting down 1-4 ratings of artwork he visited.

And then Dr. Gal stumbled upon a letter Pasteur had written to his parents about a lithographic portrait he had made of a friend.

Lithography back then involved etching a drawing onto a limestone slab with wax or oil and acid, and pressing a white piece of paper on top of it. The resulting picture was transposed, like a mirror image of the drawing left on the slab.

In his letter, Pasteur wrote:

“I think I have not previously produced anything as well drawn and having as good a resemblance. All who have seen it find it striking. But I greatly fear one thing, that is, that on the paper the portrait will not be as good as on the stone; this is what always happens.”

Eureka. “Isn’t this the explanation of how he saw the handedness on the crystals — because he was sensitized to that as an artist?” Dr. Gal proposed.

. . .

We now know that many drugs contain molecules that exist in two chiral forms, and that the two forms can react differently in the body. The most tragic example occurred in the 1950s and ’60s, when doctors prescribed Thalidomide, a drug for morning sickness and other ailments, to pregnant women. The drug also contained a chiral molecule that caused disastrous side effects in many babies.

For the full story see:

Joanna Klein. “How Pasteur’s Artistic Insight Changed Chemistry.” The New York Times (Tuesday, June 20, 2017 [sic]): D5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 14, 2017 [sic], and has the same title as the print version.)

The academic article in Nature Chemistry authored by Gal and mentioned above is:

Gal, Joseph. “Pasteur and the Art of Chirality.” Nature Chemistry 9, no. 7 (2017): 604-05.

Peppermint at One Time Required a Prescription, While Strychnine Was Sold Over-the-Counter

I suspect I would not much like the Remaking the American Patient book–it seems to blame capitalism for all of the ills of the healthcare system. But it does include one compelling example of the limitations of government regulation of drugs: allowing strychnine while restricting peppermint.

(p. D3) Medical historians who focus on the conquest of dire diseases serve up narratives of progress and triumph. Not Ms. Tomes, a professor of history at Stony Brook University, who has chosen to examine instead the health care experience of average healthy citizens, the great silent majority whose lives are punctuated by a variety of minor ills and only the occasional major calamity.

. . .

Are you perplexed by our regulatory chaos, with layer upon layer of well-meaning but persistently ineffective efforts to guarantee the safety of medical services? It turns out we come from a long tradition of such inadequacy: Patient safety has been the holy grail for everyone, long sought, never achieved.

Drug regulatory efforts have been inconsistent and confusing. (At one point in the 1940s, peppermint drops were available by prescription, while strychnine could be freely purchased by anyone).

For the full review see:

Abigail Zuger, M.D. “When Patients Became Purchasers.” The New York Times (Tuesday, January 26, 2016 [sic]): D3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date Jan. 23, 2016 [sic], and has the title “Review: ‘Remaking the American Patient’.”)

The book under review above is:

Tomes, Nancy. Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers, Studies in Social Medicine. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

In Middle Ages the Less Credentialed Offered “Daily Care,” While “Experts” Theorized

(p. 12) A new book about medieval views on medicine helps explain the Oby nuns’ contentment with the cheapness of their lives. In “Medieval Bodies: Life and Death in the Middle Ages,” the British art historian Jack Hartnell tackles a difficult phenomenon: the medieval embrace of medical “theories that have since been totally disproven to the point of absurdity but which nevertheless could not have seemed more vivid or logical in the Middle Ages.”

The doctors of Europe and the Mediterranean were not practical specialists but rather scholars of Greek and Roman natural philosophy, which taught a theory of nature composed of four basic elements (fire, water, earth, air). Each was associated with differing levels of moisture and heat. The human body contained four viscous liquids or “humors”: phlegm, blood, yellow bile and black bile. A doctor’s job was to correct an uneven humoral balance, drying up perceived wetness with spices or relieving an excess of heat with cooling herbs.

While experts promulgated theory, daily care was mostly administered by midwives, apothecaries, dentists and the odd entrepreneurial carpenter. A local barber might puncture your neck to drain three pints of blood if you complained of a headache.

For the full review see:

Josephine Livingstone. “Death by a Thousand Cuts.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, January 5, 2020 [sic]): 12.

(Note: the online version of the review has the date Nov. 19, 2019 [sic], and has the title “Bad Bishops, Bloodletting and a Plague of Caterpillars.”)

The book under review is:

Hartnell, Jack. Medieval Bodies: Life and Death in the Middle Ages. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.

Not All Indians Were Peaceful Saints

The scalp of William Thompson. Source of photo: Omaha Public Library.

As I child I played cowboys and Indians. We used to fire the fake rifles at the frontier fort on Tom Sawyer Island in Disneyland. Today you cannot do that since it is politically correct to believe that before the arrival of universally evil Europeans all Indians were peace-loving environmentalists. The belief is false. But The Walt Disney Company in California has bought the falsehood, closing the Disneyland frontier fort so that children can no longer pretend to defend civilization. (In Florida, where civilization yet survives, The Walt Disney Company still allows children to play in the Magic Kingdom version of the frontier fort.)

(p. E1) I’m leading off with my nomination for the most bizarre item ever exhibited in Omaha. It’s been around for more than 150 years, and it’s a shame if you haven’t seen it–that is, as long as you’re not too squeamish It used to belong to William Thompson, an Englishman who was employed by Union Pacific on the new transcontinental railroad.

In 1867, while working at Plum Creek Station, near Lexington, Nebraska, Thompson was scalped by a band of the Northern Cheyenne. He was left for dead, but when he recovered consciousness, he found his scalp not far away. Remarkably, he put it in a bucker of salt water and headed to Omaha on a rescue train. On arrival he asked Dr. Richard Moore to reattach it. That wasn’t possible, so he kept it as a souvenir. Later he gave the preserved scalp to Moore, who donated it to the Omaha Public Library in 1900. Since then, it has been exhibited from time to time at both the old Union Pacific Museum and the main library. OPL took it off public exhibit in 1977, but it made a surprise appearance in 2012 for the library’s 140th anniversary celebration. I am grateful to library specialist Lynn Sullivan for a private showing last year of the desiccated scalp, complete with a nice shock of sandy-orange hair.

For the full story see:

Marks, Bob. “Weird, Wild and Wonderful Exhibits Here.” Omaha World-Herald (Sunday, March 21, 2024): E1-E2.