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The Man with the Golden Arm · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just us And that's okay because we're
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: gonna get bloody here on this episode of Stuff you
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Shouldn't Know.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I just had a cockroach crawl over my barefoot.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I've got a cockroach story for you. First of all,
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: how are you doing? Be okay with that cockroach experience
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: you just had?
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: It's it's not my favorite thing.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Secondly, why are you barefoot? We're working?
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Oh? You know, I don't put on cheese onless I
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: have to.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Thirdly, you want to hear my cockroach story? Uh?
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, Although I will quickly say that's not the worst.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: The worst cockroach story I've ever had is when I
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: saw one as I was turning out the light fall
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: from a ceiling above my bed. And then the light
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: went off, and then.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Right you heard the cockroach go nighty night, what's yours?
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: It just happened today. I don't know if this is
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: my worst or not. It's pretty bad. I went to
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: go pour coffee from our coffee pot and a roach
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: spilled out along with the coffee into my mug. It
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: was like in the port, the top that you can
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: take off. He was in the little spout. Apparently.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I just remembered I had the worst one, because I
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: think this tops yours. I drank a cockroach in some
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: red wine one time.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: That's the worst one. There you go. Could you feel
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: it crawling around in your gullet.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Just swimming through the red wine in my mouth? And
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I just said it was And I'm sure everyone just
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: heard me stomping in the back.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Tell me you didn't, Dude, you want me.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: To get up in the middle of a recording and
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: save a cockroach, I'd wait, Yeah, no, I don't save cockroaches.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I don't feel bad about it either. We've talked about
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: this before. I think please tick, mosquitoes, cockroaches, everything.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Always on fleas, ticks and mosquitoes. I'll leave alone.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I know you've claimed that many times. We all know
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: you're better.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I saw a cartoon. It was it was the Annual
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Meeting of Insects people like, and they switched to the
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: next panel and it was just a butterfly sitting alone
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: at a conference table.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: That's cute, but you know, you can't save the cockroach
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: if they just crawled into the cup. I might think
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: about it, but they don't.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, I disagree. I try to get them with a
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: paper towel, lightly pick them up and throw them outside
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: and say, Sionara.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Sure they suffer no damage?
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Probably not. They're pretty tough. Okay, this one was all right,
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: let's get let's get that's terrible. Let's get to this
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: episode because this is a profile in courage and heroism
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: of an everyday guy who found out he was a
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: little more special than the rest of us and he
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: put it to good use. Inness that's right, James harris Son.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Is that? Am I saying that correctly?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: I think so. Australia's own James Harrison, who is probably
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: the most prolific blood donor in maybe human history. He
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: donated blood one and seventy three times over a sixty
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: year period and is credited with saving the lives of
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: two point four million babies. Yeah, referred to as the
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: man with a Golden Arm. And we need to back
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: up a second. You can either pause and go listen
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: to our episode on blood types.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: That was a live one, right, I think so, or.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: You can listen to a quick explanation of what RH
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: disease is and what our AH incompatibility is because when
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: you have a blood type you've you've heard now we
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: know that you can be like positive or negative, like
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: oh positive, oh negative? That negative or positive is your
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: r H factor so named after the the r H
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: reesis monkey inadvertently not correctly named. And so that's a
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: rh factor. That's it's a protein found on the outside
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: of your red blood cells and then you either have
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: it or you don't. It's an inherited thing. R eighty
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: five percent of babies that are born or are H positive,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: which means they have that protein, but you either have
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: it or you don't, and that becomes incompatible when it
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: doesn't match up with what your mom has.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's a real problem because if your mom
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: is RIGE negative, meaning she doesn't have those proteins, her
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: body's never been exposed to those proteins. So when she
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: has a baby developing in her stomach her womb I
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: guess you'd call it, and some of those red blood
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: cells across the placental barrier, her body flips out. It's like,
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: what is this? We need to create some antibodies to
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: attack this, and those antibodies attack the red blood cells,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: the protein on the red blood red blood cells, the
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: rh factor and and tear them apart. And that is
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: not what you want happening to your feet as well.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: It's developing in your room.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: No, it's not. And just to be clear, it's not
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: it's not a problem at all to have a negative
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: blood type. Is just this incompatibility in pregnancy is a problem.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: And on the first pregnancy this can happen and everything
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: is likely going to be okay. It's the subsequent pregnancies
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: that are the issue. And so to prevent this from happening,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the pregnant person is giving immunoglob globulin. I have such
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: a hard time saying that. And that's that prevents those
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: antibodies from forming and attacking. And it's a it's a
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: done in the way of a plasma injection called anti
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: d right.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: And the reason why the first birth is okay is
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: because the mom's body is still generating antibodies because again
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: these are brand spank and new for her immune system.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: And so when the first baby comes out, her immune
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: systems like, yeah, that's right, walk away, walk away. And
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: then when the second baby comes it's ready, and that's
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: when it really becomes a problem and it can result
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: in and very frequently results in stillborn babies newborn deaths
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: as well. So if it wasn't bad enough, just add
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: dying babies to it and it suddenly becomes much more urgent.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And it's not that rare either as the thing.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, they didn't even know about this until
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, the RH factor. Before that, it was
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: just the ABO system. But there was a woman who
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: had given birth to a stillborn baby, was given a
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: transfusion from her husband and had an adverse reaction despite
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: having a matching blood type. So that's when scientists figured
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: it out, like, oh hey, there's another factor here, and
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: it's this negative and positive RH factor. And another Australian,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: a guy named John Gorman, a doctor, was working in
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: blood banking, and this was in nineteen fifty eight. He said, hey,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: I think that if we give these mothers an RH antibody,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't make any of that antibody themselves. So it's
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: kind of like a weird reverse treatment.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And it's really worth saying it's weird because
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: they don't know still to this day, exactly how it
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: happens or how it protects developing fetuses infants. They think
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: the best guess is that these antibodies that they consider
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: passive antibodies, they don't attack the red blood cells of
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: the developing child. Instead, they actually attached to it an
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: active protective bayer layer, essentially like obi Wan saying to
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: the mom's immune system, these are not the red blood
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: cells that you seek, not the factor that you're interested in.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Beat it, in the words of Obi Wan, like I said.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: So, doctor Gorman and his research partner they tested this
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: idea out on prisoners, on male prisoners at Sing Sing
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Prison in New York, injecting that RH negative into them
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: with anybodies and then measuring the response, and they found
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: that at worked and that it was safe. Obviously not
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the most ethical thing theoretically, I guess these were volunteers,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: but you know how that goes. But the question still remained,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: like will it save a baby? And it turns out
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: that his sister in law, Kath was a nurse and
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: was RH negative and his brother, her husband, was RH positive,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: and they were like, hey, will be the guinea pigs
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: in this one. Let's do it.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So the problem was is that John Gorman's brother
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: and sister in law. Kath and Frank lived in London
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: at the time, and Gorman, like you said, was in
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: America even though he was Australian. It's a brain buster,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: I know. But the upshot of it is that Gorman
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: sent this anti d inoculation essentially that he was testing
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: out to the Gormans in London. They had to go
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: to Heathrow to pick it up. John Gorman had to
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: get it to them so quickly. He didn't even fill
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: out paperwork. He just sent it like it was yeah,
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know, like a deodorant, a push pop or
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: something like that. Push, yeah, deodorant great. And they had
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: to go to Heathrow to pick it up. That's how
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: time urgent this was, and if there was, if it
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: wasn't urgent before, it was when they got to Heathrow,
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: because Kath went into labor when they were picking up
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: this injection.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so they were somehow managed to talk this doctor
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: into administering this treatment, which that's probably the most surprising
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: thing that this doctor went along with it, but that
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: doctor did, and Kath Gorman had a healthy son, and
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: then she had another healthy son a year later after
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: giving this injection and they were like, hey, it worked,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: and now it's given to women in the twenty eighth
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: week of pregnancy and if the baby has found out
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: to be RH positive, given again within seventy two hours
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: of giving birth.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think one of the other things that stood
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: out to me about Katherine Frank Gorman's story is that
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: the doctor who gave them the injection was persuaded to
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: do so also by a team of a rival team
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: from Liverpool who were also working on some sort of
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: antidote to RH factor disease. So they basically said like,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: this is actually going to launch John Gorman into the
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: lead here, even though we're competing to come up with this,
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: but seriously, you should you should inject her with this.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: It's going to be great.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: So they put saving babies before their own career.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah. I think Gorman ended up saying that
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: it was the most cost effective drug ever produced in
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: fifty years. There have been no fatalities from this treatment,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: and he said it saves about a billion dollars every
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: year by preventing high risk RH pregnancies.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was really something. The thing is, you
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: still need to this day human blood to make the
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: anti d immunoglobin. Yeah, globulin, it is hard to say, chuck, yeah, inoculation.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, plasma technically yeah.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, And this is where James Harrison comes in. But
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: he doesn't come in yet, dear people, because you were
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: going to have to pay through the nose to get
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: to him by listening to these commercials. Okay, everybody, thanks
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: for listening to those commercials. We're back and it's time
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: that we really introduce you to James Harrison. He was
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: an amazing guy, but I feel like we should go
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: back to before he was a full guy, when he
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: was just a fourteen year old, because he to win
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: a really big time surgery and I could not find
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: out why, but he had to have an entire lung
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: removed again at age fourteen.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's not a lot about the guy. Even when
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: you Reada's obituary, the just details are scant, and I
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: sort of feel like he probably wanted it that way
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: as a kind of a low key awesome dude. But yeah,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: at fourteen, he had a lung removed. He was in
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the hospital for three months and during that time he
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: required almost two gallons of blood, thirteen units of donor blood,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: a human adult has about ten units of blood, so
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: a fourteen year ol wouldn't even have that much. So
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: basically a full plus transfusion of his blood that saved
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: his life and comes out of it as a fourteen
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: year old, and his dad explains what happened, and he's like,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I know my calling, Like when I come out of
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: this and I'm able to be old enough to give
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: blood and plasma, like that's what I'm going to do
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: with my life.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, his dad was already a blood donor too, so
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm sure it was gratifying for him and James Harrison.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: I guess he had to wait a few years before
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: he was eligible to donate blood, but once he did,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: he started doing it right off the bat, right when
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: he could. But it took another eleven years. I guess
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: when he was in his early thirties, he has something
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: like that, we're about to be thirty before the doctors
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: were like, hey, hey, this guy's something special. He's got
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: some dynamite plasma because they think when he got all
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: of that blood he was RH negative, but he got
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: a lot of RH positive blood and his body started
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: making RH positive antibodies that can just knock your socks off.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: So this guy, James Harrison, when he was fourteen, essentially
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: acted inadvertently as a human test tube or Petrie dish
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: where they put together RH negative and RH positive, shook
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: it up, and this guy started making antibodies for the
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: rest of his life that would go on to save
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: baby Yeah.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, his stuff was so good and he was
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: so prolific and dedicated, and we'll talk more about that.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: There was a doctor that said in the Sydney Morning
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Morning Herald in twenty eighteen that every ampuel of anti
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: d ever made in Australia has James in it.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, primo stuff.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Pretty cool. So the two point four million babies he
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: saved not an exact number obviously, but they basically did
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: a calculation where they analyzed birth data from nineteen sixty
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: four moving forward, accounted for the people who got this
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: antid treatment, and then weighed overall mortality risk from RH
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: disease and came up with that number two and a
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: half million babies.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean, when you donate blood, you do
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: save lives, but you don't necessarily save babies lives like
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: James Harrison was a baby saving machine, that's right.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: They tried a synthetic version, but they're still not there yet,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: so they they're still reliant on people, you know, donating
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: their blood and plasma. But the synthetic that they've been
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: working on it they call it James in a Jar,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: which is kind of cute.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: As well, right for sure. So, like you said, it
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: is kind of tough to find much about James Harrison's
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: life other than his blood donation. Laura Claus and doctor
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Claw helped us with this one, and she found out
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: that he was a clerk in the Regional Railway Authority
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: and his wife, his beloved wife, Barbara, who died in
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: two thousand and five, was a teacher and Harrison's dedication
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: was such that when they went on vacation. Whenever they
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: went on vacation, they would putts around Australia in a camper.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: He would find the closest blood donation clinic and go
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: donate blood. And the reason why he did that so
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: often was because with plasma donations, your body regenerates the
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: plasma so quickly, I think within forty eight hours that
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: in some cases, in some countries, you can donate plasma
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: couple of times a week rather than the I don't.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: I can't remember. It's several weeks, if not a month
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: or more that you have to wait to donate whole
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: blood like the regular kind.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you have to wait two weeks for
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: plasma even But he wanted to donate so frequently they
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: would been the rules and like they said that, he
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: would come in at day like ten and eleven sometimes
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: and be like, come on, just take my plasma. I'll
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: be fine, And they did oftentimes. And they don't get
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: paid for it. You can get paid. It's a sort
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: of a I don't know how common it is, but
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: it's an old trick if you're really broke and can't
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: make rent to sell plasma in the United States, because
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: you can get paid for donating plasma. But he didn't
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: get paid for any of this either.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: No, we should also say if you've never donated plasma,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: but you've donated blood, it's it's slightly different. Donating blood
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: can take fifteen minutes. Maybe donating plasma is a whole
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: thing where they take your blood out just like they
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: do with whole blood, and then they run it through
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: a machine that separates the plasma from the platelets and
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: the red and white blood. Cells and returns the red
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: and white blood cells to you, and the whole process
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: takes about an hour rather than a quarter of an hour,
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: and it has all the other stuff the lead up
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: in the recovery that a whole blood donation takes. So
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: when you take that into account, James Harrison making these donations,
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: it's just even that much more removal worthy.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I mean one of these guys said, it's
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: like a half a day basically when you count in
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: travel and all that. Yeah, so if he donate, you know,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: let's say that's like four hours, and if he donated
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: you know eleven, I mean how many times? Was it
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: eleven hundred plus? Yeah, Like that's just thousands and thousands
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: of hours of his life where he's trying to donate
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: even more frequently, Like, hey, it's been ten days, get
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: me in there, I'm ready for sure.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: I'm sure. His coworkers were like, oh, James gets to
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: take a four hour lunch break every couple of weeks,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: and his supervisors like, let me tell you about James
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: and what he's doing with this four hour lunch.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Exactly, you like, saving babies.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: So he and his wife, Barbara had a daughter and
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: two grandchildren, and the daughter was an anti DE recipient herself,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and she made a big statement after he died as
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: an ANTID recipient myself, he has left the family behind
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: that may not have existed without his precious donations. And
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I believe a granddaughter in law, Rebecca Mellowship, also got
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the anti D treatment. So he even furthered his own
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: family by helping out his daughter and granddaughter in law.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess he had four great grandchildren when he
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: died this past February in twenty twenty five. Yeah, and yeah,
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: like she said, like you can make a really good
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: case that these people would not necessarily exist without him
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: donating a very special plasma. And this was like not,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: It's not like his family wasn't aware of this, Like
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: this is a big celebrated thing, not just with his
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: family but in Australia. And so his grandson Scott turned
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: sixteen and said, I want to join the family racket
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: and start donating blood too. So the first time he
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: gave blood, he went with his grandfather took him with him,
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: and so Scott's first time was his grandfather's one thousandth
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: donation too, and apparently the whole family donates blood, which
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: I mean imagine being the one family member who was like, no,
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: I don't feel like it.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Never everybody, oh man.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Is donating it. But you know there's one you know, there's.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: One family shame. His wife passed away, Barbara, in two
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: thousand and five, so very dark times for him, and
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: he pressed through and did not let that disrupt his
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: donation schedule. So for the last twenty years of his
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: life as a widower, he he you know, kept giving
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: that stuff, even though he hated needles, he hated the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: sight of blood, and he had a very low threshold
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: for pain.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Yep, there it is our O Henry style ironic twist. Yeah,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: the man who he gave blood one and seventy three
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: times to save two point four million babies was afraid of.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Needles, that's right. And he had a favorite arm too, right.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, his right arm. He said at some point that
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: he feels like he even admitted it could be placebo effect,
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: but he can feel them injecting the ivy into his
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: left arm, but he doesn't feel it in his right arm.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: So out of those eleven hundred and seventy three times,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: only about ten were in his left arm.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, should we take a break.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: We should, all.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Right, We'll take a break and finish up right after this.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: All right, So we're back to talk a little bit
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: more about the dedication of James Harrison, the most prolific
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: blood donor in plasma donor in history, even in his
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: older years, because he gave until he was eighty one.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, I finally said you got to stop,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: and he didn't want to stop, but they're like, you know,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: for your own health, you can't keep doing this. But
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: up until that point, he would ride the train an
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: hour each way to go to this donation center that
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: was the closest one, or at least that was the
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: regular one that he became accustomed to. And he was
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: really broken up. He said, it's a sad day for me,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: the end of a long run. I keep going on
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: if they let me. And this is just I have
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: a hard time even getting through the sentence. But the
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: last time he gave the blood, he was surrounded by
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: moms and babies that he had saved.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Incredibly, pretty amazing. Yeah, apparently even though he was
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: something of a celebrity at least that blood blood banks
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: in Australia, I think, well, beyond that too. He was
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: very unassuming in that he never walked in, you know,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: wearing sunglasses and a scarf.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: And then with the Golden arm is.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Here exactly and just wearing his jacket over his shoulders.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He instead would just kind of chitchat other people
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: who are giving donations and kind of telling them like, hey,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: you're doing something great. But he didn't say and I
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: should know because I'd saved two point four million babies.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: He was not that kind of person. I feel like
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: this would be a different episode if he had been
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: that kind of person. It'd still be worth talking about,
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: but maybe less celebratory. I don't know, but this guy
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem to have really been bad at all in
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: any way, shape or form, and we really looked.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Well, here's a couple of quotes. It becomes quite humbling
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: when they say, oh, you've done this, or you've done that,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: or you're a hero. It's something I can do. It's
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: one of my talents, probably my only talent, is that
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I can be a blood donor and that saving one
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: baby is good. Saving two million is hard to get
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: your head around. But if they claim that's what it is,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: I'm glad. To have done it.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: You just imagine every one of these quotes. He's got
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: his hands in his pockets and he's just kind of
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: kicking around some pebbles with his feet looking down.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna get a shirt that says what would
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: James Harrison do?
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Right man? One of my favorite shirts of all time
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: is that what would Jason Do? It's like a hockey
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: mask instead of the Jay.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: That's funny.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Just the implications behind the whole thing make it even
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: funnier too.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, what would Jason do? He'd gill?
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: He just slaughter everybody with No. I love that T shirt,
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: I guess is what I'm trying to say.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Do you have it?
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: No, I've looked before and I can't find the exact one.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: There's a guy who we worked with who wore one
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: to work once, and I was shirt's awesome but also
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: unsettling in the office setting. I can't remember his name.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: He was a big guy and he looked like the
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: kind he would wear that shirt. He looked like he
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: was clearly into horror movies. Okay, he was strapping large dude.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: I cannot remember his name.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: He's a good guy, Okay, was this way back in
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: the day was his buckhead?
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, oh yeah, way back in the day.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was back in the times where there were
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: so many people working in her office that didn't know
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: half of them were.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: You would have interacted with this guy. He was one
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: of the writers.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Oh not, I remember that guy?
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that guy.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the big dude. Yes, like just very tall, big guy.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you look like a football player?
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of. Do you remember that shirt? No?
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: But man, what a vague memory of that guy. I'd
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: totally remember. Jerry would know. But she's not here, No,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: she's not here as usual. So back to James Harrison,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: what would he do? Sadly he would eventually pass, but
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: he lived to be eighty eight and like you mentioned,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: he just died recently in February of this year, but
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: before we passed in nineteen ninety nine, which means his
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: wife Barbara got to see this. He was also a
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: blood donor, by the way, quite regular.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: He received the Medal of Order in Australia for his efforts.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: That's amazing. Again, almost two and a half million babies
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: just saved by this guy. And he's not the only one.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: He's one of just a small number of people that
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: turns out who are able to donate blood because they
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: produce the antibody needed to create the antid inoculation. When
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: this first was realized, I guess shortly after nineteen fifty eight,
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: a group of women in Winnipeg in Canada got together
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: and they became known as the rh Ladies of Winnipeg,
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: and they started donating plasma to make the Canadian version
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: of antid wind row. And one of them was a
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: woman named Mary tell you who had lost three different
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: babies to RH incompatibility, and she went on to donate
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: for fifteen years. And again, this is not normal blood.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: These people's blood is incredibly special and it saves babies.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's less than two hundred anti D donors in Australia.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: One of those is a woman named Kieran Froes. I
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: don't know how you pronounce that froze freeze Freese. Maybe
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: is either the osylum or the asyluent. But Kieran is
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: a midwife and benefited from the anti D drug during
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: her own pregnancies, and she learned that people who had
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the right kind of blood could donate for this, and
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: she advocated to be allowed to do so. And apparently
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: had to like kind of lobby to be able to
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: do it, right.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because she didn't naturally make the antibodies herself like
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: other people like James Harrison does. There's a way that
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: you can actually sensitize people by exposing them to the
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: antibodies and then over time their body will start making
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: the antibodies themselves, these protective ones. And that's what she did.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: She's like, I want to volunteer to be inoculated with
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: this stuff so that I can start producing this plasma.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: And she had to prove that she was no longer
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: able to have children. She had to send her medical
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: records showing her hysterectomy to Lifeblood, the Australian Blood Donation
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: people before they would even let her like get into
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: this program.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we can't forget about the people who also
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: allow that to happen by contributing to that program despite
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: not having that urge negative blood, right, Like, she gets
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: those sensitization boosters from people donating their blood to be
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: transfused into her and others like her.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And from what I saw, there was only one
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: there's one matched donor that donates when they go in
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: to give blood and they're anonymous. When they go in
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: to give blood, their blood is taken and given specifically
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: to Karen Froze or Freeze. So like this person is
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: it's just cool that they're anonymous too, and that that's
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: what they're doing. Like that's some pretty niche blood donation.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: If you think about it, you know.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, and you know that they're they're doing
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: the right thing. In Australia. Wealthier countries obviously have a
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: better time with this, but very sadly, as you guessed it,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: studies estimate that half the women in the world who
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: need treatment don't get it. In developing countries obviously, most
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: acutely fifty thousand fetuses and one hundred and fourteen thousand
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: newborn sty every year as a result of this rh
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: and compatibility who can't get this treatment. And the United
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: States we don't do a great job donating blood. So
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I'm calling people out and asking you to step up
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: to the table into that needle. Sixty two percent of
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the population is eligible to donate, but three percent do so,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: compared to fifty seven percent in Australia that are eligible
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: and fourteen percent do so. So they could kick it
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: up a bit too, but that three percent is shameful.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not totally out of bounds though. With other
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: industrialized Western countries the UK two point six percent of
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: the population, donates, four percent in France, and then somewhere
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: between five and six for Denmark, Germany, Greece and Cyprus.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: So yeah, we could definitely do a lot better. It
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: seems like from what I can tell, I look to
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: find what country has the most blood donors. From what
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: I can tell, Australia far and away leads the pack
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: from the whole world. That's my own research, take it
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: or leave it. I didn't do any maths, so it
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: is possible it's accurate, But that seems to be the
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: highest percentage I could find was Australia's.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: I bet you anything. Old James Harrison has something to
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: do with that in the news and story surrounding his.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: Efforts, for sure, I would think so too.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: This has spurred me to get out there and do
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: this on the RAG too, So I'm going to donate
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: some blood next week.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Good for you, buddy. I'm going to get back to
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: it too. You may introduce me to it, and I've
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: definitely fallen off so let's go together. We can hold
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: hands while we donate. Oh, it'd be pretty cute.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: That would be cute.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: And you know what I'm going to get us matching
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: with James Harrison's picture on it.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Very nice.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, Chuck said very nice, which is what I
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: was fishing for, which means also he just triggered listener mail.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, this is I guess, a bit of a
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: correction for the heavy metal episode. Hey guys, there are
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: a few mistakes that I won't hassle you about. After all,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: I didn't catch anything too significant. However, I should tell
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: you that Rob Halford's leather infatuation did not come from
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: his time in S and M clubs and bars. In
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: his own book, Biblical Heavy Metal Scriptures is a chapter
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: called Denman Leather, where he speaks about how, although it
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: did spawn a leather fetish, his love for Denemon leather
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: came from bands other bands like Saxon, who bore the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: combination and turned it into a heavy metal uniform of sorts.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: He's even quoting him others reckon that I started wearing
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: my studs and leather as a means to express my
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: repress homosexuality. No, I effing didn't Deneman. Leather has been
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: part of metal basically from the beginning. It was a
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: visual display of how the originators felt on the inside,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the way the music sounded, the way they felt rebellious.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: His book is great, by the way, I recommend it
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: if you're into ancient metal gods. Speaking on the topic again,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for the three part episode. Guys,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: that has to be a record, right, including the horns episode.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: I call that a triple much love to you all.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: That is from Joshua Ernsberger of Ogden, Utah.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Very nice. Thanks Joshua, thanks for setting us straight. We
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: appreciate that, especially from another josh You know what I'm saying.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: That's right, and you know what, in your defense, that
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: sounds like the kind of thing that is just everywhere
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: on the internet.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: I saw it everywhere, and I had no reason to
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: doubt it, sure because I hadn't read Rob Halford's autobiography,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: which was just stupid of me.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you didn't have time.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I fell for it. Everybody. If you want to
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: get in touch with this like Joshua did and set
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: us straight, you too can send us an email. Send
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: it off to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.