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ErythroMer Artificial Blood

ErythroMer is a shelf-stable synthetic red blood cell.

The bunny huddled in a black metal cage, a catheter going straight into its carotid artery. Days before, a portion of its blood had been siphoned out and replaced with an experimental blood substitute called ErythroMer. It is decidedly not milk. Developed by Allan Doctor, a bespectacled 61-year-old physician-researcher at the University of Maryland (UMD) School of Medicine, and colleagues, ErythroMer is made from “recycled” human hemoglobin—the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body—wrapped in a membrane to mimic a tiny cell. In the rabbit, the transfusion appeared to be working. The animal’s heart rate and blood pressure, displayed on a small monitor nearby, looked just fine.

(Via Science.)

Science fiction writer and practicing psychiatrist Dr. David H. Keller described artificial blood in his macabre 1929 classic The Eternal Professors:

How fortunate it was that I had perfected the manufacture of synthetic blood! What a wonderful fluid that was! A fluid that performed every vital function of human blood, and yet, which could be scientifically and accurately manufactured outside of the body, and which could be perfectly cleansed of all impurities every time it made one circulation of the head. That is what is keeping Grecco so young. And I am sure that our bodyless professors will not grow old. I do not know how long they will live, but I am sure, if they are carefully guarded against infections and if machinery is, oh, so constantly watched, that they will live on for many years.


('The Eternal Professors' by David H. Keller, M.D.)

July, 10th. — I am busy teaching my technique to a dozen of the most expert surgeons that I have ever seen. Every man is first required to operate on at least a dozen dogs. The pumping machines are being built very rapidly. My chemists are all working on the preparation of the artificial blood. They have remarkable ability to learn quickly. We must work rapidly, for all of the two hundred heads must be ready to lecture by Sept. 20th. Besides, the sooner we free the heads from the bodies infected with sarcoma, the more sure we will be of their going on with their useful work.

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