Every now and then we come across stories of real people commiting acts of heroism. In a way, this story is more alligned with comic book super heroes because of this mans circumstances.
My favorite comic book hero is Spider-Man, and in this story lies a famous quote: "With great power, comes great responsibility."
When you are given this "power" to help people, will you do just that? Would you sacrifice the rest of your life? You can never really tell until you are in that situation yourself, but who here would turn down a chance to help another if they were given the power to do so?
Mr. Harrison is a real hero who dedicated his life to his cause. His blood type has become a vaccine called Anti-D. RH disease, or Rhesus disease, is one of the root causes to the hemolytic disease of the newborn.
Wiki
Alloimmunity is a condition in which the body gains immunity, from another individual of the same species, against its own cells, which develops in a fetus, when the IgG molecules (one of the five main types of antibodies) produced by the mother pass through the placenta. Among these antibodies are some which attack the red blood cells in the fetal circulation; the red cells are broken down and the fetus can develop reticulocytosis and anaemia.
This fetal disease ranges from mild to very severe, and fetal death from heart failure (hydrops fetalis) can occur. When the disease is moderate or severe, many erythroblasts are present in the fetal blood and so these forms of the disease can be called erythroblastosis fetalis (or erythroblastosis foetalis).
I can't imagine the hurt of losing my little boys. Thanks to James Harrison, families all over Australia have been given second chances at love, life and happiness:
Mr Harrison has been giving blood every few weeks since he was 18 years old and has now racked up a total of 984 donations. When he started donating, his blood was deemed so special his life was insured for one million Australian dollars.
He said: 'I've never thought about stopping. Never.' He made a pledge to be a donor aged 14 after undergoing major chest surgery in which he needed 13 litres of blood. 'I was in hospital for three months,' he said. 'The blood I received saved my life so I made a pledge to give blood when I was 18.'
Just after he started donating he was found to have the rare and life-saving antibody in his blood.
At the time, thousands of babies in Australia were dying each year of Rhesus disease. Other newborns suffered permanent brain damage because of the condition.
The disease creates an incompatibility between the mother's blood and her unborn baby's blood. It stems from one having Rh-positive blood and the other Rh-negative. After his blood type was discovered, Mr Harrison volunteered to undergo a series of tests to help develop the Anti-D vaccine.
Mr Harrison is Rh-negative and was given injections of Rh-positive blood.
It was found his plasma could treat the condition and since then it has been given to hundreds of thousands of women.
It has also been given to babies after they are born to stop them developing the disease.
It is estimated he has helped save 2.2 million babies so far.
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