Cc D. ee

[pne]

In an attempt to understand the notation “Cc D. ee” on my blood donor pass (well, in one of them, but that’s a rant for another day; the other one has “CcD.ee”), I headed towards Wikipedia and found the article “Rh blood group system”; however, the notation there differed from what I saw.

Fortunately, the German article “Rhesusfaktor”, which was interwiki-linked from the English one, contained the same notation I found. And with the addition of the Wiener notation, I think I was able to convert: CcDdee = R₁r = D+ C+ E- c+ e+ = DCe/dce.

And according to the English article, that group comprises about 32.7% of a sample taken of the UK population in 1948, and according to the German article, about 35.0% of the population of Germany (a plurality; the next most populous group is just over half that, with 18.5% - the situation seems to be similar with the UK sample).

So in other words: I have bog standard blood. Absolutely middle-of-the-road. And by my AB0 type (0+), that makes me one of 35% in Germany, nearly the largest group (only A+ is slightly larger, with 37%—interestingly enough, in the UK, the percentages are exactly reversed). So again, bog standard.

Comments

[pne]

Which just means that more people are in need of your blood :)

True enough, I suppose :)

Almost universal donor!

Indeed!

Though given that Rh- blood is fairly rare (about 10–20% of the population depending on the country, based on a rough skim of the table in here), I’m an even-more-almost-universal donor than if it had been a 50/50 split: about 85% of the population of Germany can probably receive my blood without a problem.

[yvi]

That's pretty much what I meant with the "almost universal". 50% wouldn't be quite as big a boost to the ego, would it?

(I, um, kind of wrote a few pages paper on blood group evolution and distribution during my Evolutionary Biology specialisation - the distribution is quite fascinating)

[pne]

That's pretty much what I meant with the "almost universal".

Ah, OK. I thought you meant "only one factor separates you from the ideal universal donor".

50% wouldn't be quite as big a boost to the ego, would it?

Well, it's more than 10 times as many as I could have reached with, say, AB+! (At least in Germany.)

(I, um, kind of wrote a few pages paper on blood group evolution and distribution during my Evolutionary Biology specialisation - the distribution is quite fascinating)

I can only imagine!