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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's just us and that's okay, because we're going to get bloody here on this episode of Stuff You Should Know.
I just had a cockroach crawl over my bare foot.
I've got a cockroach story for you.
First of all, how are you doing?
You okay with that cockroach experience you just had?
It's not my favorite thing.
Secondly, why are you barefoot?
We're working.
You know, I don't put on shoes unless I have to.
Thirdly, you want to hear my cockroach story.
Yes.
Although I will quickly say that's not the worst.
The worst cockroach story I've ever had is when I saw one.
As I was turning out, the light fall from a ceiling above my bed.
Yikes.
And then the light went off.
And then you heard the cockroach go nighty night.
What's yours?
It just happened today.
I don't know if this is my worst or not.
It's pretty bad.
I went to go pour coffee from our coffee pot and a roach spilled out along with the coffee into my mug.
It was like in the port, the top that you can take off.
He was in the little spout, apparently.
I just remembered I had the worst one because I think this tops yours.
I drank a cockroach in some red wine one time.
That's the worst one.
There you go.
Could you feel it crawling around in your gullet?
Just swimming through the red wine in my mouth.
And I just spit it out.
And I'm sure everyone just heard me stomping in the background.
Tell me you didn't.
Dude, you want me to get up in the middle of a recording and save a cockroach?
I'd wait, yeah.
No, I don't save cockroaches.
I don't feel bad about it either.
We've talked about this before.
Please, please, ticks, mosquitoes, cockroaches.
I'm with you on fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes.
Cockroaches, I'll leave alone.
I know.
You've claimed that many times.
We all know you're better.
I saw a cartoon.
It was the annual meeting of insects people like and they switched to the next panel and it was just a butterfly sitting alone at a conference table.
That's cute.
But, you know, you can't save a cockroach.
If they just crawled into the cup, I might think about it.
But they don't.
Okay.
I disagree.
I try to get them with a paper towel, lightly pick them up, throw them outside and say sayonara.
I'm sure they suffer no damage.
Probably not.
They're pretty tough.
Okay.
This one wasn't.
All right.
Let's get – that's terrible.
Let's get to this episode because this is a profile in Courage and Heroism.
Of an everyday guy who found out he was a little more special than the rest of us, and he put it to good use.
That's right.
And his name is James Harrison?
Am I saying that correctly?
I think so.
Australia's own, James Harrison, who is probably the most prolific blood donor in maybe human history.
He donated blood 1173 times over a 60-year period and is credited with saving the lives of 24 million babies.
Yeah. referred to as the man with the golden arm.
And we need to back up a second.
You can either pause and go listen to our episode on blood types.
That was a live one, right?
I think so.
Or you can listen to a quick explanation of what RH disease is and what RH incompatibility is.
Because when you have a blood type you've heard, now we know that you can be like positive or negative, like O positive O negative.
That negative or positive is your RH factor, so named after the RH rhesus monkey, inadvertently not correctly named.
And so that's a RH factor.
It's a protein found on the outside of your red blood cells, and you either have it or you don't.
It's an inherited thing.
Right.
Eighty-five percent of babies that are born are RH positive, which means they have that protein.
Mm-hmm.
But you either have it or you don't.
And that becomes incompatible when it doesn't match up with what your mom has.
Right.
Yeah, that's a real problem, because if your mom is Rh negative, meaning she doesn't have those proteins, her body's never been exposed to those proteins.
Her body flips out.
It's like, what is this?
We need to create some antibodies to attack this.
And those antibodies attack the red blood cells, the protein on the red blood cells, the Rh factor.
And tear them apart.
And that is not what you want happening to your fetus while it's developing in your womb.
No, it's not.
And just to be clear, it's not a problem at all to have a negative blood type.
It's just this incompatibility in pregnancy is a problem.
And on the first pregnancy, this can happen and everything is likely gonna be okay.
It's the subsequent pregnancies that are the issue.
And so to prevent this from happening, The pregnant person is giving immunoglobulin.
I have such a hard time saying that.
And that prevents those antibodies from forming and attacking.
And it's done in the way of a plasma injection called anti-D.
Okay.
Right.
And the reason why the first birth is okay is because the mom's body is still generating antibodies.
Because again, these are brand spanking new for her immune system.
And so when the first baby comes out, her immune system is like, yeah, that's right.
Walk away.
Walk away.
And then when the second baby comes, it's ready.
And that's when it really becomes a problem.
And it can result in and very frequently results in stillborn babies and newborn deaths as well.
So if it wasn't bad enough, just add dying babies to it and it suddenly becomes much more urgent.
And it's not that rare either is the thing.
Yeah, I mean, they didn't even know about this until 1939, the RH factor.
Before that, it was just the ABO system.
But there was a woman who had given birth to a stillborn baby, was given a transfusion from her husband and had an adverse reaction, despite having a matching blood type.
So that's when scientists figured out like, oh, hey, there's another factor here.
And it's this negative and positive RH factor.
And another Australian, a guy named John Gorman, a doctor, was working in blood banking.
And this was in 1958.
He said hey, I think that if we give these mothers an RH antibody, they wouldn't make any of that antibody themselves.
So it's kind of like a weird reverse treatment.
Right.
Yeah.
And it's really worth saying.
It's weird because they don't know still to this day exactly how it happens or how it protects developing fetuses, infants.
They think the best guess is that these antibodies that they consider passive antibodies, They don't attack the red blood cells of the developing child.
Instead, they actually attach to it an active protective layer.
Yeah.
Essentially like Obi-Wan saying to the mom's immune system these are not the red blood cells that you seek.
This is not the factor that you're interested in.
Beat it, in the words of Obi-Wan, like I said.
So, Dr Gorman and his research partner, they tested this idea out on prisoners on male prisoners at Sing Sing Prison in New York, injecting that RRH negative into them with antibodies and then measuring the response.
And they found that it worked and that it was safe.
Obviously not the most ethical thing.
Theoretically, I guess these were volunteers, but you know how that goes.
But the question still remained, like, will it save a baby?
And it turns out that his sister-in-law, Kath, was a nurse who, And was RH negative.
And his brother, her husband, was RH positive.
And they were like, hey, we'll be the guinea pigs in this one.
Let's do it.
Yeah.
So the problem was is that John Gorman's brother and sister-in-law, Kath and Frank, lived in London at the time.
And Gorman, like you said, was in America, even though he was Australian.
It's a brain buster, I know.
But the upshot of it is that Gorman sent this anti-D inoculation essentially that he was testing out to the Gormans in London.
They had to go to Heathrow to pick it up.
John Gorman... had to get it to them so quickly.
He didn't even fill out paperwork.
He just sent it like it was, I don't know, like a push pop or something like that.
Yeah, deodorant.
Great.
And they had to go to Heathrow to pick it up.
That's how time urgent this was.
And if it wasn't urgent before, it was when they got to Heathrow, because Kath went into labor when they were picking up this injection.
Yeah.
So they uh were somehow managed to talk this doctor into administering this treatment, which that's probably the most surprising thing, that this doctor went along with it.
But, uh, that doctor did and Kath Gorman had, uh, A healthy son.
And then she had another healthy son a year later after giving this injection.
And they were like, hey, it worked.
And now it's given to women in the 28th week of pregnancy.
And if the baby is found out to be RH positive, given again within 72 hours of giving birth.
Yeah, I think one of the other things that stood out to me about Kath and Frank Gorman's story is that the doctor who gave them the injection was persuaded to do so also by a rival team from Liverpool who were also working on some sort of antidote to RH factor disease.
So they basically said like this is actually going to launch John Gorman into the lead here, even though we're competing to come up with this.
But seriously, you should inject her with this.
It's going to be great.
Yeah.
So they put saving babies before their own career.
That's great.
Yeah.
I think Gorman ended up saying that it was the most cost effective drug ever produced in 50 years.
There have been no fatalities from this treatment.
And he said it saves about a billion dollars every year by preventing high risk R.H. pregnancies.
Yeah.
So it was really something.
The thing is.
You still need, to this day, human blood to make the anti-D immunoglobulin.
It is hard to say, Chuck.
Inoculation.
Yeah.
Plasma, technically, yeah.
Yes.
And this is where James Harrison comes in.
But he doesn't come in yet, dear people, because you are going to have to pay through the nose to get to him by listening to these commercials.
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OK, everybody, thanks for listening to those commercials.
We're back and it's time that we really introduce you to James Harrison.
He was an amazing guy, but I feel like we should go back to before he was a full guy, when he was just a 14 year old, because he underwent a really big time surgery and I could not find out why.
But he had to have an entire lung removed, again, at age 14.
Yeah, there's not a lot about the guy.
Even when you read his obituary, the details are scant.
And I sort of feel like he probably wanted it that way as kind of a low-key, awesome dude.
But yeah, at 14, he had a lung removed.
He was in the hospital for three months and during that time he required almost two gallons of blood, 13 units of donor blood.
A human adult has about 10 units of blood, so a 14-year-old wouldn't even have that much.
So basically...
A full plus transfusion of his blood that saved his life and comes out of it as a 14 year old.
And his dad explains what happened.
And he's like, I know my calling.
Like when I come out of this and I'm able to be old enough to give blood and plasma, like that's what I'm going to do with my life.
Yeah, his dad was already a blood donor too, so I'm sure it was gratifying for him.
And James Harrison, I guess he had to wait a few years before he was eligible to donate blood.
But once he did, he started doing it right off the bat, right when he could.
But it took another 11 years, I guess when he was in his early 30s, Yeah, something like that.
We're about to be 30.
Before the doctors were like, hey, hey, this guy's something special.
He's got some dynamite plasma because...
They think when he got all of that blood, he was RH negative, but he got a lot of RH positive blood.
And his body started making RH positive antibodies that can just knock your socks off.
So this guy, James Harrison, when he was 14, essentially acted inadvertently as a human test tube or Petri dish, where they put together Rh negative and Rh positive, shook it up.
And this guy started making antibodies for the rest of his life that would go on to save babies.
Yeah.
I mean, his stuff was so good and he was so prolific and dedicated.
And we'll talk more about that.
There was a doctor that said in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2018 that every ampule of anti-D ever made in Australia has James in it.
Yeah.
Primo stuff.
Pretty cool.
So the 24 million babies he saved not an exact number obviously, but they basically did a calculation where they analyzed birth data from 1964 moving forward, accounted for the people who got this anti-D treatment and then weighed overall mortality risk from RH disease and came up with that number two and a half million babies.
Yeah, because I mean, when you donate blood you do save lives, but you don't necessarily save babies' lives.
Like James Harrison was a baby-saving machine.
That's right.
They've tried a synthetic version, but they're still not there yet.
So they're still reliant on people, you know, donating their blood and plasma.
But the synthetic that they've been working on it.
They call it James in a jar, which is kind of cute as well.
Right, for sure.
So, like you said, it is kind of tough to find much about James Harrison's life other than his blood donation.
Laura Clausen, Dr. Clausen helped us with this one.
And she found out that he was a clerk in the regional railway authority.
And his wife, his beloved wife, Barbara, who died in 2005, was a teacher.
And Harrison's dedication was such that when they went on vacation whenever they went on vacation they would putz around Australia in a camper.
He would find the closest blood donation clinic and go donate blood.
And the reason why he did that so often was because with plasma donations your body regenerates the plasma so quickly I think within 48 hours that in some cases in some countries, you can donate plasma a couple of times a week, rather than the I can't remember it's several weeks, if not a month or more, that you have to wait to donate whole blood like the regular kind.
Yeah.
I mean, you have to wait two weeks for plasma even, but he wanted to donate so frequently, they would bend the rules.
And like they said that he would come in at day like 10 and 11 sometimes and be like come on, just take my plasma.
I'll be fine.
And they did oftentimes and they don't get paid for it.
You can get paid.
It's a it's a sort of a.
I don't know how common it is, but it's an old trick if you're really broke and can't make rent, to sell plasma in the United States, because you can get paid for donating plasma.
But he didn't get paid for any of this either.
No, we should also say if you've never donated plasma, but you've donated blood, it's slightly different.
Donating blood can take 15 minutes maybe.
Donating plasma is a whole thing where they take your blood out, just like they do with whole blood, And then they run it through a machine that separates the plasma from the platelets in the red and white blood cells and returns the red and white blood cells to you.
And the whole process takes about an hour rather than a quarter of an hour.
And it has all the other stuff, the lead up and the recovery that a whole blood donation takes.
So when you take that into account James Harrison making these donations it's just even that much more hat removal worthy.
Yeah.
Like I mean, one of these guys said it's like a half a day basically, when you count in travel and all that.
Yeah.
So if he don't, you know, let's say that's like four hours.
And if he donated, you know, 11, I mean, how many times was it?
1100 plus?
Yeah.
Like that's just thousands and thousands of hours of his life.
Where he's trying to donate even more frequently.
Like, hey, it's been 10 days.
Get me in there.
I'm ready.
For sure.
I'm sure his coworkers were like, oh, James gets to take a four-hour lunch break every couple weeks.
And his supervisors like.
Let me tell you about James and what he's doing with this four-hour lunch break.
Exactly.
You like saving babies?
Right.
So he and his wife, Barbara, had a daughter and two grandchildren.
And the daughter was an NTD recipient herself.
And she made a big statement after he died.
As an Auntie Dee recipient myself.
He has left a family behind that may not have existed without his precious donations.
And I believe a... granddaughter-in-law, Rebecca Melliship, also got the anti-D treatment.
So he even furthered his own family by helping out his daughter and granddaughter-in-law.
Yeah, I guess he had four great-grandchildren when he died this past February in 2025.
Yeah.
And yeah, like she said, you can make a really good case that these people would not necessarily exist without him donating his very special plasma.
Yeah.
And this was like not – it's not like his family wasn't aware of this.
Like this was a big celebrated thing, not just with his family, but in Australia.
And so his grandson Scott, turned 16 and said I want to join the family racket and start donating blood too.
Yeah.
So the first time he gave blood, his grandfather took him with him.
And so Scott's first time was his grandfather's 1,000th donation, too.
And apparently the whole family donates blood, which I mean.
Imagine being the one family member who's like.
No, I don't feel like it.
Oh, man.
He's donating it, but you know there's one.
You know there's one.
Family shame.
His wife passed away, Barbara, in 2005.
So very dark times for him.
And he pressed through and did not let that disrupt his donation schedule.
So for the last 20 years of his life As a widower, he kept giving that stuff, even though he hated needles, he hated the sight of blood and he had a very low threshold for pain.
There it is, our O. Henry-style ironic twist.
Yeah.
The man who gave blood 1,173 times to save 2.4 million babies was afraid of needles.
That's right.
And he had a favorite arm too, right?
Yeah, his right arm.
He said at some point that he feels like he even admitted it could be placebo effect but he can feel them injecting the IV into his left arm, but he doesn't feel it in his right arm.
So out of those 1,173 times, only about 10 were in his left arm.
Yeah.
Should we take a break?
We should.
All right.
We'll take a break and finish up right after this.
Hey everybody, get this.
LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers.
And that's where it stands apart from other ad buys.
Yeah, for sure.
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So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience.
Yep.
That's why LinkedIn ads generates the highest B2B ROAS of all online ad networks.
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That's right.
The weather's starting to cool down a little and get.
This Wayfair even has espresso makers, so you can make that latte at home.
You know the one I'm talking about.
Yeah, and why not stock up on warm linens, cozy throw blankets, autumn-themed throw pillows and storage for every space.
You got to put your outdoor furniture up, and you need a place to store it?
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All right, so we're back to talk a little bit more about the dedication of James Harrison, the most prolific blood donor and plasma donor in history, even in his older years, because he gave until he was 81.
In 2018, they finally said, you got to stop.
And he didn't want to stop, but they were like you know, for your own health, you can't keep doing this.
But up until that point, he would ride the train an hour each way to go to this donation center.
That was the closest one, or at least that was the regular one that he became accustomed to.
And he was really broken up.
He said, it's a sad day for me, the end of a long run.
I keep going on if they let me.
And this is just I have a hard time even getting through this sentence.
But the last time he gave the blood, he was surrounded by moms and babies that he had saved.
Yeah.
Incredible.
Pretty amazing.
Yeah.
Apparently, even though he was something of a celebrity, at least at blood banks in Australia, I think well beyond that too, he was very unassuming in that he never walked in wearing sunglasses and a scarf.
Yeah.
The man with the golden arm is here.
Exactly.
And just wearing his jacket over his shoulders.
Right, yeah.
He instead would just kind of chit-chat other people who were giving donations and kind of telling them like hey –.
You're doing something great.
But he didn't say, and I should know because I've saved 2.4 million babies.
He was not that kind of person.
I feel like this would be a different episode if he had been that kind of person.
It'd still be worth talking about, but maybe less celebratory.
I don't know.
But this guy doesn't seem to... really been bad at all in any way, shape or form.
And we really looked.
Well, here's a couple of quotes.
It becomes quite humbling when they say, oh, you've done this or you've done that or you're a hero.
It's something I can do.
It's one of my talents.
Probably my only talent is that I can be a blood donor.
And saving one baby is good.
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.
And like you just imagine every one of these quotes.
He's got his hands in his pockets and he's just kind of kicking around some pebbles with his feet, looking down.
Yeah.
I'm going to get a shirt that says, what would James Harrison do?
Right.
Man, one of my favorite shirts of all time is that what would Jason do?
It's like a hockey mask instead of a J. That's funny.
Just the implications behind the whole thing make it even funnier, too, you know?
Yeah.
What would Jason do?
He'd kill.
He'd just slaughter everybody with a machete.
He wouldn't save a baby.
No.
I love that t-shirt, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Do you have it?
No, I've looked before and I can't find the exact one.
There was a guy who we worked with who wore one to work once and I was like, that shirt's awesome.
But also unsettling in the office setting.
Who wasn't, do you know?
I can't remember his name.
He was a big guy.
And he looked like the kind who would wear that shirt.
He looked like he was clearly into horror movies.
He was strapping.
Large dude.
I cannot remember his name.
He was a good guy.
Okay.
Was this way back in the day?
Was this Buckhead?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Way back in the day.
Yeah, that was back in the times where there were so many people working in our office.
I didn't know half of them were.
You would have interacted with this guy.
He was one of the writers.
Oh, now I remember that guy.
Yeah, that guy.
Yeah, the big dude.
Yes.
Like just very tall, big guy.
Yes.
Yeah.
He looked like a football player.
Yeah, kind of.
Do you remember that shirt?
No, but man, what a vague memory of that guy.
I totally remember Jerry would know, but she's not here.
No, she's not here as usual.
So back to James Harrison.
What would he do?
Sadly, he would eventually pass, but he lived to be 88.
And like you mentioned, he just died recently in February of this year.
But before he passed in 1999, which means his wife Barbara got to see this, who was also a blood donor, by the way, quite regular.
Sure.
He received the Medal of Order in Australia for his efforts.
That's amazing.
Again, almost two and a half million babies just saved by this guy.
And he's not the only one.
He's one of just a small number of people, it turns out, who are able to donate blood because they produce blood, the antibody needed to create the anti-de-inoculation.
When this first was realized, I guess shortly after 1958, a group of women in Winnipeg in Canada And they became known as the RH Ladies of Winnipeg.
And they started donating plasma to make the Canadian version of anti-DE, Winro.
And one of them was a woman named Mary Talew, who had lost three different babies to Rh incompatibility.
And she went on to donate for 15 years.
And again, this is not normal blood.
These people's blood is incredibly special and it saves babies.
Yeah, there's less than 200 ANTD donors in Australia.
One of those is a woman named Kieran Froese.
I don't know how you pronounce that, Froese?
Froese?
Maybe it's either the O silent or the E silent.
But Kieran is a midwife and benefited from the anti-D drug during her own pregnancies.
And she learned that people who had the right kind of blood could donate for this.
And she advocated to be allowed to do so and apparently had to like kind of lobby to be able to do it right.
Yeah, because she didn't naturally make the antibodies herself like other people, like James Harrison did.
There's a way that you can actually sensitize people by exposing them to the antibodies.
And then over time, their body will start making the antibodies themselves, these protective ones.
And that's what she did.
She's like I want to volunteer to be inoculated with this stuff so that I can start producing this plasma.
And she had to prove that she was no longer able to have children.
She had to send her medical records showing her hysterectomy to Lifeblood, the Australian blood donation people, before they would even let her get into this program.
Yeah.
And we can't forget about the people who also allow that to happen by contributing to that program despite not having that RH negative blood.
Right.
Like she gets those sensitization boosters from people donating their blood to be transfused into her.
And others like her.
Yeah.
And, from what I saw, there's only one.
There's one match donor that donates when they go in to give blood and they're anonymous.
When they go in to give blood, their blood is taken and given specifically to Karen Froese or Froese.
So, like this person is, it's just cool that they're anonymous too and that that's what they're doing.
Like that's some pretty niche blood donation if you think about it, you know?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, they're doing the right thing in Australia.
Wealthier countries obviously have a better time with this, but very sadly...
As you guessed it, studies estimate that half the women in the world who need treatment don't get it.
In developing countries obviously most acutely.
50000 fetuses and 114000 newborns die every year as a result of this RHN compatibility.
Who can't get this treatment?
And the United States, we don't do a great job donating blood.
So I'm calling people out and asking you to step up to the table and to that needle.
62 of the population is eligible to donate, but 3 do so illegally, compared to 57 in Australia that are eligible and 14 do so.
So they could kick it up a bit too, but that 3% is shameful.
Yeah.
It's not totally out of bounds, though, with other industrialized Western countries.
The UK, 2.6% of the population donates.
Four percent in France, and then somewhere between five and six for Denmark Germany, Greece and Cyprus.
So, yeah, we could definitely do a lot better.
It seems like from what I can tell, I look to find what country has the most blood donors.
From what I can tell, Australia far and away leads the pack in the whole world.
That's my own research.
Take it or leave it.
I didn't do any math, so it is possible it's accurate.
But that seems to be the highest percentage I could find was Australia's.
I bet you anything old James Harrison has something to do with that in the news and stories surrounding his efforts.
For sure.
I would think so, too.
This has spurred me to get out there and do this on the reg too.
So I'm going to donate some blood next week.
Good for you, buddy.
I'm going to get back to it too.
You may introduce me to it and I've definitely fallen off.
So let's go together.
We can hold hands while we donate.
Aw.
It'd be pretty cute.
That would be cute.
And you know what?
I'm going to get us matching blankets with James Harrison's picture on it.
Very nice.
Okay.
Well, Chuck said very nice, which is what I was fishing for, which means also he just triggered listener mail.
Yeah, this is, I guess, a bit of a correction for the heavy metal episode.
Hey, guys, there were a few mistakes that I won't hassle you about.
After all, I didn't catch anything too significant.
However...
I should tell you that Rob Halford's leather infatuation did not come from his time in SM clubs and bars.
In his own book Biblical Heavy Metal Scriptures, he has a chapter called Denim and Leather where he speaks about how, although it did spawn a leather fetish, his love for Denim and leather came from bands other bands like Saxon who wore the combination and turned it into a heavy metal uniform of sorts.
He's even quoting him.
Others reckon that I started wearing my studs and leather as a means to express my repressed homosexuality.
No, I effing didn't.
Denim and leather has been part of metal basically from the beginning.
It was a visual display of how the originators felt on the inside, the way the music sounded, the way they felt.
Rebellious.
His book is great, by the way.
I recommend it if you're into ancient metal gods speaking on the topic.
Again, thank you so much For the three-part episode, guys, that has to be a record, right?
Including the horns episode?
I call that a triple.
Much love to you all.
That is from Joshua Ernstberger of Ogden, Utah.
Very nice.
Thanks, Joshua.
Thanks for setting us straight.
We appreciate that.
Especially from another Josh.
You know what I'm saying?
That's right.
And you know what?
In your defense, that sounds like the kind of thing that is just everywhere on the Internet.
I saw it everywhere.
And I had no reason to doubt it.
Sure.
Because I hadn't read Rob Halford's autobiography, which was just stupid of me.
Yeah, you didn't have time.
Sorry I fell for it, everybody.
If you want to get in touch with us, like Joshua did, and set us straight, you too can send us an email.
Send it off to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
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