Series
The Body Series
The machinery you are made of and the machinery built around it: blood groups and why they matter at a transfusion, how a diagnosis is actually reached, how an emergency department decides who goes first, and how a drug gets from a molecule to a pharmacy shelf. Part of Under the Hood.
What a Blood Group Actually Is
The A and B blood groups are sugars on the surface of a red cell, O is the absence of both, and the antibodies that make a mismatch lethal are already in your plasma before you have ever seen the other type. RhD works the other way round, which is why a negative recipient can take positive blood once and not twice. Compatibility in both directions, why plasma runs backwards from red cells, and why the appeal is always for a particular type.
Coming soon