James Harrison, Whose Antibodies Helped Millions, Dies at 88; February 17, 2025

[mahatmakanejeeves]

The story is already at DU in a few places. I'm going to link to a formal obituary.

https://news.google.com/search?q=james%20harrison&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

James Harrison, Whose Antibodies Helped Millions, Dies at 88
James Harrison earned the nickname “The Man With the Golden Arm” because his blood had a rare antibody that may have helped more than two million babies in Australia. He died at 88.


James Harrison, whose plasma provided rare antibodies, making his 537th blood donation, in 1992. Simon Alekna/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images

By Amelia Nierenberg
March 4, 2025
Updated 10:31 a.m. ET

James Harrison did not much care for needles. Whenever he donated plasma, he would look away as the tip went into his arm. ... But Mr. Harrison, an Australian who died last month at 88, was one of the most prolific donors in history, extending his arm 1,173 times. He may have also been one of the most important: Scientists used a rare antibody in his plasma to make a medication that helped protect an estimated 2.4 million babies in Australia from possible disease or death, medical experts say.

“He just kept going, and going, and going,” his grandson Jarrod Mellowship, 32, said in an interview on Monday. “He didn’t feel like he had to do it. He just wanted to do it.” ... Mr. Harrison — who was affectionately known as “The Man with the Golden Arm” — died in his sleep at age 88 on Feb. 17, at a nursing home about an hour’s drive north of his regular donation center in Sydney, Mr. Mellowship said.

Mr. Harrison’s plasma contained a rare antibody, anti-D. Scientists used it to make a medication for pregnant mothers whose immune systems could attack their fetuses’ red blood cells, according to Australian Red Cross Lifeblood. ... It helps protect against problems that can occur when babies and mothers have different blood types, most often if the fetus is “positive” and the mother is “negative,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. (The positive and negative signs are called the Rhesus factor, or Rh factor.)

In such cases, a mother’s immune system might react to the fetus as if it were a foreign threat. That can lead babies to develop a dangerous and potentially fatal condition, hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn, which can cause anemia and jaundice. ... The condition is uncommon: Only about 276 out of 100,000 live births have complications related to this type of blood incompatibility, the Cleveland Clinic said. ... But doctors cannot predict whether such an incompatibility will lead to serious problems. So, in Australia, the practice is to offer the medication to all pregnant women with negative antibodies as a preventative measure, according to Lifeblood.

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James Harrison in 2018 preparing for his last blood donation. Subel Bhandari/Picture Alliance, via Getty Images

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“Saving one baby is good,” he said, after his final donation in 2018. “Saving two million is hard to get your head around, but if they claim that’s what it is, I’m glad to have done it.”

Mr. Harrison’s wish, he liked to say, was that people would keep donating. Maybe even more than he did, Mr. Mellowship said: “Because then it means the world’s going in the right place.”

Amelia Nierenberg is a breaking news reporter for The Times in London, covering international news More about Amelia Nierenberg