Scientists say they can change a person's blood type. Would you go for such a change?

Question

If a person's blood type is O positive, it could be changed to say O negative, Or, any type you have now to some other type of your choice. Would you go for such a change?

Answer 1

Depends on the situation; if it can save my life yes. Definately no if people are doing it just to be 'hip.'

Answer 2

I'm afraid you misperceived some scientific reporting or been misinformed.

scientists cannot change a person's blood type permanently or even temporarily. What they are trying to do (they haven't been able to do it effectively yet) is be able to convert A, B, and AB type blood to type O blood.

Bloodtypes are categorized by the types of sugars that are attached to a protein on the surface of a person's red blood cells. Bloodtypes A and B have different sugars attached to these proteins. Bloodtype AB has both types of sugar molecules attached. Bloodtype O has NO sugars attached to this protein.

Recently scientists have found some microorganisms that have enzymes that specifically remove the A and B sugars from the surface of red blood cells and thereby making blood that resembles the O bloodtype without having to collect type O blood from a person with the O bloodtype.

This is useful because there is a shortage of type O blood in blood banks and hospitals across the world.

Answer 3

I think maybe you misunderstood a headline or something. What I did recently see in the news is that they thought they would be able to change the blood type of a sample. So say someone with A type blood donated, they could remove what makes the blood A and thus make all blood donated into O type blood, so anyone could receive it.

However, I don't think they can do anything about the rh factor, so O - type blood would still be quite rare.

Answer 4

Why would that be important unless you have an absolutley rare blood type, and even then...that's silly.

Answer 5

Which scientists? I don't think this is true.