why can’t people with anemia (not enough iron in blood) get blood transfers from donors who have hemochromatosis (too much iron in blood)?
In: Biology
In an emergency, they could (assuming the blood bank accepts donors with hemochromatosis – the American Red Cross does not).
But the bigger reason not to do this is that there are significantly easier and less invasive ways of treating most forms of anemia. Blood is a scarce resource, and blood transfusions are not a risk-free procedure. Every unnecessary blood transfusion risks generating immunity against the hundreds of blood group antigens that are not a match between the donor and recipient.
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