Opinion or fact will be accepted!?!


Question:

Opinion or fact will be accepted!?

Can a persons genetic code be changed after receiving a blood transfusion? Also, after the transfusion, if the blood came from a different race, can their children then have some genetic properties of the person who donated the blood?


Answers:

The short answer is no, and no.

What happens in a standard blood transfusion is that the patient receives the red blood cells from another patient. The reason for this is usually that the patient in question lacks enough red blood cells (e.g. (s)he has just had a massive blood loss). Since red blood cells are so important (they transport the oxygen that we breathe in all around the body), a blood transfusion can be a life-saving procedure.

However, all red blood cells have a finite lifespan (averaging about 120 days) and new red blood cells are made each day to replace the old ones. Thus, the donor patient's red blood cells will over time be completely lost, replaced by the patient's own cells. (In practice, the donor cells don't even last for nearly the full 120 days, for a number of reasons.)

There is NO possibility of the donor red blood cells affecting the patient's DNA. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, red blood cells don't even have DNA! (Their nucleus, which houses the DNA, is lost in their development process.) So, there's no 'genetic code' from the host in the patient's body to start with.
Secondly, even if there were stray bits of DNA, remember that the donor's cells will die out after a while - all trace of the donor's DNA would be lost.
Lastly, there is no mechanism whereby the donor's genes are somehow inserted into the patient anyway. It just doesn't happen.

Hope that helps.




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