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The Search for Artificial Blood
| Article
# : |
20440 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1992 |
2,774 Words |
| Author
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Charles Marwick
Charles Marwick covers medical news from Washington, D.C., for
the Journal of the American Medical Association. |
At the American Society of Hematology's annual meeting in Denver in November 1991, Dr.Robert M. Winslow of the University of California at San Diego reviewed effort to produce a substitute for the oxygen-carrying capacity of human blood.
"Afterward a member of the audience said he was disappointed about what he had heard", Winslow recalls, "My questioner told me that the Wall Street Journal reports that synthetic materials that can carry oxygen to the body and can be given to patients are just around the corner, but you say these agents are nowhere near ready for use.
"My immediate thought was that I've done my job properly, I've succeeded in introducing an element of reality to the picture", says Winslow. "To make effective substitutes for the oxygen-carrying capacity of
human blood is not easy. If it had been, we would have had such substitutes years "ago".
In fact, more than 100 years of research into substitutes for the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood has yet to produce a solution that can be safely and effectively used in humans. But scientists are closer than they were, and Winslow, for one, firmly believes there eventually will be a satisfactory substitute for blood. "I just don't think it's going to happen next year", he cautions.
Just around the corner?
Winslow's experience at the hematology meeting makes an important point. There is the scientific reality and there's the popular perception that a substitute for blood is just around the corner. In the summer of 1991, DNX Corporation in Princeton, New Jersey, announced that it had developed a genetically engineered pig that could produce large quantities of human hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the molecule contained in the red blood cell that actually carries oxygen throughout the body.
The announcement was carried by newspapers around the country. Even the normally restrained New York Times put the news in its most prominent position on the front page, and other stories hailed the step as a milestone in the effort to find a substitute for blood that could be used safely in humans.
Ignored by the press reports was the fact that there is no shortage of human hemoglobin; hence, the
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