Blood Substitutes in Development

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how there is a fear, which continues today, regarding safe blood and HIV and how beyond contamination, there is another serious blood issue and that involves blood shortages. It describes the actual function of the blood to the body, how blood cells regenerate, and the principles of blood transfusions. It shows that duplicating all the functions that blood performs in the human body would seem to be an impossible challenge and how any artificial blood product must pass several tests. It also looks at current research into synthetic blood production from two distinct directions, one based on chemicals and the other based on hemoglobin.

From the Paper:

"What function does blood actually provide within and for " the body" According to the assigned article in Scientific American, blood "transports nutrients, hormones and waste products"; blood also fights infections and has the ability to "clot" preventing or at least slowing down serious hemorrhaging. The part of human blood which helps fight disease is the white blood cells. But the most "familiar" function of blood in the body of mammals is the "capture and release of oxygen and carbon dioxide." The protein most commonly found in blood, hemoglobin, is also a critically important protein. Hemoglobin picks up oxygen in the lungs, and distributes it throughout the body. The red blood cells pick up carbon dioxide, which is a waste product given off through the respiration of cells, and humans exhale the carbon dioxide out through the lungs."

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