Word: bloods
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...tragedy of incompatible blood types (Rh-positive and Rh-negative) causes some married couples to condemn their own babies to death in infancy-or even before birth. Last week slim, brunette Mrs. Bettina B. Carter, 38, of Western Pennsylvania Hospital, Pittsburgh, told the Pennsylvania State Medical Society of a possible remedy...
About 85% of the white race have the mysterious Rh factor in their blood. These people are called "Rh-positive." The rest, with no Rh factor, are "Rh-negative." When an Rh-negative woman marries an Rh-positive man, their child may be Rh-positive, inheriting its blood type from the father. The two types of blood are potentially incompatible...
...infant's blood develops, it sometimes causes the mother's blood to protect itself by forming "antibodies." The antibodies may become strong enough to invade the infant's bloodstream, killing it while still in the womb, or causing it to be born with abnormal blood, severe anemia and jaundice. Some such "erythroblastic" babies can be saved by blood transfusions soon after birth. Others are in such bad shape that nothing can be done...
...Carter, widowed mother of three, worked for four years to isolate from the red cells of Rh-positive blood some substance that distinguishes it from Rh-negative blood. At last she got a "lipid" (fat-like compound) which she believes to be a "hapten" (a neutralizer of antibodies). Injected into a pregnant woman whose Rh-negative blood has formed antibodies against the incompatible blood of her unborn Rh-positive baby, hapten protects the baby's blood, and allows him to be born in normal health. Injected into a living but erythroblastic baby, it quickly restores the baby...
...treatment is still experimental. The Rh-hapten, which must be made from human blood, is expensive, and its action is not yet clearly understood. But already it has saved some babies who would almost certainly have died before birth, and others who would have had little chance of living more than a few days...