Important Medical and Movie News

I saw this exciting news, passed on by GruntDoc from The Australian: "Scientists turn skin into blood in medical breakthrough; could help cancer treatment."

It's already been possible to make blood from skin cells, but the previous technique used embryonic stem cells, while this one takes a person's skin cells and makes blood that is a genetic match.

With the ability to create blood for transfusion from a person's own skin, the advance means someday patients needing blood for surgery or to treat anemia could bypass the blood bank and derive the necessary supply from themselves.

This is exciting news, obviously, for many useful health reasons (although the implication that I might not be able to score cookies at blood drives in the future is troubling).

But know what else is exciting about it? It's obviously fuel for a fantastic gory movie! In this movie, the technology will be corrupted and used for evil (sorry, hard-working scientists whose work is always being portrayed as corrupted and used for evil), and then there will be dramatic scenes of peoples' skin turning to blood right on their bodies and pouring all over the place. Think of the exposed musculature! Organs falling all over the place!

Please feel free to use this idea in your screenplay and give me full credit and large piles of money. I'd work on it myself, but I've got this novel.

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Monster Updates

I had another successful blood drive appointment this evening.

I'm feeling all depleted of blood, but overflowing with civic spirit. I think this gives me latitude to kick some puppies. I like to try to live True Neutral, you know.

Oh, I'm kidding. I only kick evil robot puppies. They've just* become the latest monsters to haunt my nightmares. Way more horrifying than zombies. They lure you with their adorable faces, and then attack!

Evil robot puppies aside, I'm feelin' fine. Plus, I got cookies! And a coupon for a free sandwich from Qdoba! Blood drives: pure awesome.


*As in, seconds ago when I typed that sentence and the idea first entered my head and took over.

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Blood News

I see on Shakesville that a group of Senators, including my own state's John Kerry, have written a request to the FDA to rescind the ban on blood donation by men who have sex with men (MSM, in the sexual health lingo).

I've known a couple of gay men who stated that they regretted the fact that they were officially barred from donating even though the need for blood is generally steady. One said flat out that he just lied and donated anyway, the other said more or less "well, if my blood's not good enough for them, heck with 'em."

Either response seems pretty reasonable to me.

The ban has apparently been in place since 1983, so, sure, back in the day when AIDS tests were iffy and no one was completely sure how it was spread it probably seemed like a good precaution. But these days, when we know that plenty of people aside from gay men can be at risk of contracting HIV, and the means of transmission are fairly well understood, I have to say I've been waiting for them to repeal this rule ever since I've been donating.

Whether or not it will happen, we'll have to wait and see.

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Speaking of Body Temperature

--which I was a while ago, I went to give blood this evening, and once they managed to find a temperature (they couldn't get a reading at first), it was only 97.2.

It's chilly out, and I keep saying I'm cold blooded. This may serve as valuable evidence for my contention that I possess reptilian features.

Also, when they tell you to make sure to hydrate well before going to donate...just do it.

I absent-mindedly forgot about the appointment until later in the day and didn't really get to drink a lot of water, and I barely managed to finish the donation. I hate to go through that whole screening and needling process and not be able to provide a viable pint of blood, so this would have been very disappointing.

As it was, I was the last donor in the place, and they were packing up the tables and equipment as I was lying there trying to think relaxing, bloody thoughts. It took three people adjusting the needle, but in the end my reluctant vein came through.

Nice work, vein!

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The Color of Blood

I kind of like this recipe for homemade hand sanitizer, posted on Healthbolt. I usually just go with soap and water, or sometimes the bottled purple stuff that's scattered in convenient locations all over where I work (including, lately, right in front of the elevators, which is a nice way to make it available to pretty much everyone who passes through the building except lone weirdos like me who climb the stairs).

I like that stuff, 'cause it's purple. But I also like the idea of just mixing up a batch of my own purple stuff, using ingredients I have right to hand around the house:

• aloe vera gel
• grain alcohol
• tea tree oil
• fragrance 
• purple food coloring (although that's my own addition, and might dye your hands)

On second thought, I don't have those things around the house. And it's hard to even find purple food coloring, so you have to try mixing your own out of red and blue, which even though they tell you that's the way color works, it never actually comes out purple, it comes out this strange muddy color.

Beware of trying to make purple. That's why they had to make purple dye out of sea snails in the old days: it's really hard to get it to come out right. Not that making it out of sea snails was exactly the work of a lazy moment.

I also hear (check ye olde Wikipedia) that the most popular purple shade was "exactly the colour of clotted blood, and is of a blackish hue to the sight, but of a shining appearance when held up to the light."

Clotted blood, eh? That sounds more like a very dark red than what I today think of as purple. I would call this purple:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noahbulgaria/ / CC BY 2.0

Clotted blood, not quite so much:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/notratched/ / CC BY 2.0

I mean, it's a little purple, but really more red. But I guess the Phoenicians liked the color of blood more than the color of crocuses.

In closing, and to bring this back to the original topic of today's ramblings, please sanitize your hands if they come into contact with blood clots.

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Bloody Holiday

June 14th is World Blood Donor Day.

I cannot personally donate on this day, on account of I already donated in the too-recent past (missing an opportunity to get a coupon for chocolate-covered strawberries this month, too), but I will certainly celebrate with a nice blood pudding and some blood sausage.

No, I won't.

But go give blood if you can. Contribute to the health of others; it's good stuff.

Speaking of Blood and Technology

I was vastly disappointed and saddened when I tried to give blood yesterday and it turned out I couldn't because I have malaria.

I jest. In fact, I was afraid  my iron might be too low, as it sometimes is, but this time it was fine. Then I got onto the table, and they got the needle into my reclusive vein, and it turned out that my arm was just not happy about being asked to part with blood that day.

So I waited patiently for more than an hour, and did all the health history, and got the needle marks, and then after all that, I couldn't donate. Frustrating. I'm a failure.

But I got some cookies out of it, anyway.

Also, the part that has to do with technology that I wanted to mention was that the series of questions about whether or not you've lived in Europe for 5 continuous years or ever--even once!--had sex with anyone who's ever exchanged money or drugs for sex, and so forth, is now on the computer.

Well, it was on the computer before, and the blood drive person would read the questions off in a rapid monotone while you tried to pay enough attention to understand whether you needed to say 'yes' or 'no.' But now they just set it up and you read the questions yourself and click Yes or No with the mouse.

Saves a lot of time (at least for anyone who can read faster than a blood drive technician can talk), and no doubt some wear and tear on the Red Cross folks' voices. I'm all for it.

Cute Little Sacks of Blood

Healthy Concerns raises a very good question about this blood bag shaped like a teddy bear. Will children find it cute, or horrifying?

Me, I think it's kind of funny. I can also imagine many other entertaining shapes. Dinosaurs, rubber duckies, farm animals--the list is endless!

Of course, I am not a sick child needing blood.

On the Other Hand--

Rather than trying to write a novel next month, I could return to Medgadget's Sci-Fi Writing Contest. I love that contest.

Either way, I've clearly got to get some fiction writing done. It's like a message from the internet, which cannot be disobeyed. It says, "write some fiction, you lazy oaf!" 

The internet is often rude and disagreeable, but it has some good ideas.

In other news, I did not dress up for Halloween because I work in a sober and responsible house of learning, but I did spend the day reviewing the Hematology subject page. 

Mmm, blood.

Second Degree Auto-Vampirism

In case anyone ever wonders how responsible and upstanding and all-around ordinary and un-alarming a citizen I am, I would like to present this post as evidence to which generations yet to come may point in horror.

Tonight, I feasted hungrily on MY OWN BLOOD.

It had been transformed, through some strange alchemy, into chocolate-covered strawberries. So I'm also a sorcerer. Warn the children! By which I mean the medical students!

Actually I had chocolate-covered strawberries for supper. That's not horrifying (though nutritionists would perhaps advise against making a habit of it), but I got the coupon for the strawberries when I went to donate blood, so in a sense---not an accurate sense, but a sensationalistic sense, and sensationalism sells---I was consuming, as noted, MY OWN BLOOD.

Later I had some vegetables and chick peas, but it's all about having dessert first around here (another shameless affront to normal decent folk everywhere). And you know what makes the best dessert.

That's right: MY OWN BLOOD. 

Now That's Encouragement

The Red Cross in the Boston area is running a program where all presenting blood donors (i.e., you show up and go through the preliminary screening, even if you turn out not to be a successful donor because of low iron or something) receive a coupon for chocolate-covered strawberries.

This is what I consider incentive. I was almost disappointed that my iron level was fine and I was able to donate this week, since I had momentary thoughts of unsuccessfully presenting as a donor every couple of days and eating strawberries for months. 

The Red Cross should be advised that I also appreciated the ice cream cone coupons in the past. 

The Celtics tickets were fun, my in-laws appreciated the pound of coffee, and I like shirts, mugs, wristbands, squeeze-balls and teddy bears as well, but in the end you can really never go wrong with me by offering sweets.

Making it chocolate-covered strawberries is a nice touch since they also count as fruit. Score!

Speaking of fruits and vegetables, my total for today is much higher than at last report: summer squash roasted in kebab format, raisins in my rice pseudo-pudding, celery (bearing a rich cargo of peanut butter), lettuce, tomato and pickle on a half sandwich, steamed broccoli with a little green pepper and carrot, and a great luscious hunk of watermelon.

I'm definitely calling that 5 servings. And I didn't even have to count wine.