Source: https://www.renegadetribune.com/jewish-invention-myths-blood-groups/
by Karl Radl
Another common ‘jewish invention’ myth which proved difficult to crack the truth of is the claim that a Viennese jew named Karl Landsteiner ‘discovered blood groups’ in 1901. (1) This however is accurate since Landsteiner didn’t ‘discover blood groups’ but rather created the classification system building on the research of non-jewish scientists over the preceding two decades as Joan Stevenson explains:
‘In the late 1800’s, immunology was developing rapidly as scientists examined the various physiological changes associated with bacterial infection. Some pathologists studied the way cells helped the body fight disease; others favored a central role for noncellular, or humoral, factors. In 1886, George Nuttall showed how serum (the fluid remaining after a clot is removed from blood) can be toxic to microorganisms. Others obtained similar results, and although debate continued regarding cellular versus humoral immunity, most researchers focused on the humoral response to disease. It was during this period that the term “antigen” was used to refer to any substance inducing a reaction against itself by the host organism. “Antibody” referred to the factor in the serum that could react with the foreign substance.
In 1894, Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer of the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin injected cholera into guinea pigs and observed a series of changes in the cholera organisms: loss of mobility, clumping, loss of stainability, and eventual disappearance. His work inspired others. Max von Gruber, a bacteriologist at the Hygiene Institute in Vienna, was particularly interested in the clumping, or agglutination, of foreign cells. He and his student Herbert Edward Durham discovered that antibodies cause the agglutination of disease organisms and that particular antibodies react only with like or closely related microorganisms. Also influenced by Pfeiffer, Jules Bordet of the Pasteur Institute demonstrated in the late 1890’s that agglutination and hemolysis occurred after red blood cells from one species were injected into another. He pointed out that this response was similar to the body’s reaction to foreign microorganisms.
[…]
Samuel Shattock, an English pathologist, almost discovered the human blood groups. In 1899 and 1900, he described the clumping of red cells by serum from patients with acute pneumonia and certain other diseases. He could not find the clumping in the serums of normal persons because of his small sample size, and he concluded that his results reflected a disease process.
Karl Landsteiner synthesized the results of all the experiments noted above and provided a simple but correct explanation. He joined the University Hospital in Vienna and began advanced study in organic chemistry. At the age of twenty-eight, he joined Gruber at the Hygiene Institute in Vienna and soon began a lifelong interest in immunology. Almost two years later, he transferred to the Institute of Pathological Anatomy of Anton Weichselbaum.’ (2)
Stevenson’s point here is that contrary to the ‘received wisdom’ that Landsteiner ‘discovered blood groups’ in truth Landsteiner simply took the research of Nuttall, Pfeiffer, von Gruber, Durham, Bordet and Shattock and provided a classification system for what they had already observed and theorised. In truth Shattock in particular had already discovered blood groups in 1899/1900 before Landsteiner in 1901 but mistook what he was observing as being the result of disease rather than being part of blood itself.
Further what is often not stated is that Landsteiner had been an assistant of von Gruber’s from 1896-1898 at the Hygiene Institute in Vienna just when von Gruber and Durham were studying blood groups and had created what became known as the Gruber-Durham reaction based on the agglutination of human cells – including blood – which was the true basis of Landsteiner’s work and blood group system.
The question that remains is that given von Gruber left the Hygiene Institute in Vienna in 1902 – alleging poor working conditions – and transferred to the Hygiene Institute in Munich the year after Landsteiner’s ‘discovery’; did this have something to do with Landsteiner taking the credit for von Gruber and Durham’s work on blood cells?
It is quite plausible given that von Gruber and Durham’s work was the basis for Landsteiner’s ‘discovery’ and the timing fits such a scenario rather well, but as we have no direct evidence that Landsteiner stole von Gruber and Durham’s work on blood cells and presented it as his own; we have to point out that all Landsteiner ever actually did was classify the research of others rather than doing something truly new.
Thanks for reading Semitic Controversies! This post is public so feel free to share it.
References
(1) For example: https://mnews.world/en/news/the-great-jews-and-their-inventions
(2) https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/discovery-human-blood-groups
No comments:
Post a Comment