Friday, March 18, 2011

Re: Shroud blood ... types as AB ... aged blood always types as AB, so the significance of this ... is unclear

AN

Thanks for your message. As is my usual policy when I receive a private message on a topic that is covered by my blog, I respond via my blog,

[Above: "Blood type (or blood group) is determined, in part, by the ABO blood group antigens present on red blood cells": "Blood type," Wikipedia, 11 March 2011. Note that type AB has no antibodies present.]

minus the sender's personal identifying information. Your words are >bold to distinguish them from mine.

----- Original Message -----
From: AN
To: Stephen E. Jones
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 9:07 PM
Subject: Shroud of Turin AB Blood Q

>Dear Mr. Jones,
>
>In surfing the web for information about the Shroud, I ran across your blog, one dated Thurs, June 28, 2007.

That would be my post on my CED blog: "Bogus: Shroud of Turin? #9: Bloodstains on the Shroud are type AB, contain DNA and are anatomically perfect," where I used to post on the Shroud of Turin, before I started my The Shroud of Turin blog.

>I have followed the science of the Shroud with interest for a number of years.
>
>In listening to several podcasts & interviews of Shroud conferences when discussing the Shroud blood, which types as AB, a clarification is often added that aged blood always types as AB, so the significance of this (the AB phenotype) is unclear.

Blood from the bloodstained areas of the Shroud of Turin has been independently tested at the State University of New York (SUNY) and it was again confirmed that it was real blood, of blood type AB:

"Several claims have been made that the blood has been found to be type AB, and claims have been made about DNA testing. We sent blood flecks to the laboratory devoted to the study of ancient blood at the State University of New York. None of these claims could be confirmed. The blood appears to be so old that the DNA is badly fragmented." (Daniel R. Porter, "How do you know that there is real blood on the Shroud?," 6 November 2005)
But if blood of any type tends to lose its antibodies over time (which seems reasonable, although I don't know of any definitive scientific statement to that effect or how long it takes), then it would eventually come to appear to be type AB blood, since as the Wikipedia diagram above indicates, type AB blood has no antibodies.

Therefore, while that the blood from bloodstained areas of the Shroud of Turin (and the Sudarium of Oviedo) are both blood type AB does not prove that the blood on them is from a Jewish person, it is still significant in that:

1) It further confirms that the blood on the Shroud (and the Sudarium) is real blood. This is a huge (if not fatal) problem for all forgery theories, because (as would be the case if the Shroud was Jesus' or at least a real crucifixion victim), there is no image under the bloodstains, i.e. the blood was on the cloth before the image was formed. But no forger would, or even could, apply blood first on linen and then paint, scorch, photograph or otherwise, the image around the bloodstains:

"Interestingly, there is no image under the blood meaning that the order of events is blood first followed by image. This is the correct sequence if authentic but nearly impossible for an artist. As such, according to the article, they added blood after the image was already created." (Russ Breault, "Is the Shroud of Turin a Fake?," EzineArticles.com, 11 October 2009).

"The image does not exist below blood stains. An artist would have needed to apply real blood first anticipating the exact placement of the image or to have created the image with reserved areas for the blood stains. The very idea of an artist doing so is preposterous." (Daniel R. Porter, "The Shroud image is not manmade," Shroud of Turin Story, 26 July 2004).
And if the Shroud is not a forgery, then even arch-sceptics like Steven Schafersman admit that it must be authentic, i.e. it is Jesus' Shroud:
"Oddly enough, the Shroud opponents have actually helped to make our case. Certainly the need to resort to a denigration of the scientists on the basis of their religious preferences shows a decided bias on their part. In addition, if critics feel the need to declare Jesus a myth, are they not actually suggesting that the Shroud evidence indeed matches the Gospel narratives of Christ's passion and death? At least a few of them are willing to admit this in print. For example, Schafersman states, `Stevenson and Habermas even calculate the odds as 1 in 83 million that the man of the shroud is not Jesus Christ ... a very conservative estimate [Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1981, "Verdict on the Shroud," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, p.128]. I agree with them on all of this. If the shroud is authentic, the image is that of Jesus. Otherwise, it's an artist's representation... ." [Schafersman, S., "Science, the Public, and the Shroud," Skeptical Inquirer, B, 1982:41, italics added]" (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1990, "The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson: Nashville TN, pp.196-197. Emphasis original).
2) It is not inconsistent with the Man on the Shroud being Jewish. If the blood on the Shroud had been of a predominantly European blood type like O, then that would be evidence for the Shroud originating in medieval Europe.

3) It is consistent with the Shroud being old. If the blood from the Shroud had been of a blood type other than AB, or a mix of AB and another type in varying stages of denaturing, then that would be evidence that the Shroud was medieval, or at least not from the time of Jesus.

4) It is consistent with the Shroud of Turin and Sudarium of Oviedo having both covered the same body of Jesus, whereas it would be evidence against the authenticity of one or the other, or both, if they had different blood types:

"The most striking thing about all the stains is that they coincide exactly with the face of the image on the Turin Shroud. The first fact that confirms the relationship between the two cloths is that the blood on each belongs to the same group, AB. If the blood or each cloth belonged to a different group, there would be no sense in pursuing the comparative investigation, and little meaning in any further points of coincidence. This test is the starting point for all the others, and the results are positive. Blood of the group AB is also very common in the Middle East and rare in Europe." (Guscin, M., 1998, "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, pp.27-28).
>I noticed a reference on your blog page for this, Wilson & Schwartz, 2000, p.77,

Here again is the quote from Wilson & Schwortz, 2007, p.77:

"In fact, quite independently of Drs Heller and Adler, other findings have served to confirm that what appears to be blood genuinely is blood. For instance the Italian pathologist Dr Pier Luigi Baima-Bollone, who has carried out thousands of autopsies, and who has had more Shroud `blood' sample than was accorded to Dr Adler, has not only confirmed it to be blood, but confidently identified it as of the AB group. [Baima-Bollone, P., Jorio, M. & Massaro, A.L., "Identification of the Group of the Traces of Human Blood on the Shroud," Shroud Spectrum International, Issue 6, March 1983, pp.3-6] Although this group is comparatively rare among Europeans and is found in only 3.2 per cent of the world's population as a whole, its incidence is 18 per cent among Jewish populations of the present-day Near East. [Garza-Valdès, L., "The DNA of God?," Doubleday: New York , 1999, p.39] Caution is needed, however, since some researchers have noted a tendency among blood samples more than several centuries old always to test AB." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, p.77).
And here are some further quotes on the topic of the Shroud blood being type AB:
"Which blood-group? The last step has been identifying the blood-group made feasible by the fact that the persistence of the relevant properties in very ancient materials can be taken for granted. Laboratory findings are that the stains on the Shroud behave like those of people with blood-group AB, while the `white' fibres give no response. Many factors can lead to error in determining the blood-group of ancient stains. A whole series of antigens of animals, worms and bacteria are know to produce falsely positive responses. In the Shroud's case, contamination by matter accidentally preserved in the cloth is ruled out because the stained fibres yielding a positive response and the `white' fibres yielding none were offered up on the same slides and thus examined under the same conditions. Furthermore, a falsely positive result is mainly found with B antigens. In our case, microscopic control has shown no differences in the intensity of agglutinisation A and aglutinisation B. What is more, the earlier haematological investigations showed that the blood on the Shroud is perfectly preserved, with no trace of contamination, due perhaps to the inhibiting presence of the aloes and myrrh. Nor, lastly, can it be objected that B properties did not exist in antiquity, since all investigations undertaken prove the contrary." (Baima-Bollone, P. & Zaca, S., 1998, "The Shroud Under the Microscope: Forensic Examination," Neame, A., transl., St Pauls: London, pp.22-23. Emphasis original).

"Blood of the AB group Following the generic identification of the blood, Baima Bollone, in 1981 succeeded in showing that it was human blood. The year after he communicated yet another step forward in his discovery: its type according to the ABO grouping system. It turned out that the blood on the Shroud was of the group AB. [Sindon, n. 31, December 1982, pp. 5-9]." (Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: Malta, p.210. Emphasis original).

"In Italy, Dr Baima Bollone, who had taken samples from the `blood' areas with sticky tape, reported that yes, there was blood, and it was of the AB group ... The immunohistochemical tests we conducted showed that the blood on the Shroud was of the AB group, which was and still is the most common blood group among Jews. In western Europeans and in Americans, it is less common. (We did not have enough blood sample to test for the rhesus factor.) It was interesting that our findings supported the claims of Baima Bollone back in Italy." (Garza-Valdes, L.A., 1998, "The DNA of God?," Hodder & Stoughton: London, pp.38-39. Emphasis original).

"On the afternoon of 21 April 1988, just a few hours after having cut off the snippets of the Shroud used for radiocarbon dating, the Italian microscopist Dr Giovanni Riggi took a 1.5 mm `blood' sample from the back-of-the-head region. In June 1993 he provided some of this sample to a visiting American microbiology professor, Dr Leoncio Garza-Valdès, who took it back for analysis at the University of Texas' Center for Advanced DNA Technologies at San Antonio, Texas. There the laboratory director, Dr Victor Tryon, and his technician wife, Nancy Mitchell Tryon, quickly established that the sample was human blood of the AB group, just as Baima-Bollone had before them" (Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, pp.77-78).
Note that Dr Victor Tryon, of the University of Texas, also "established that the sample was human blood of the AB group."

>Do you know of any further references (especially scientific articles) related to this? I don't have this book, when I look on Amazon & click on it, it says unavailable.

I don't know of any independent scientific statement that all blood types tend to denature or degrade over time to type AB. But again the chart at "Blood type," Wikipedia, 11 March 2011, above indicates that blood type AB has no antibodies present, which would seem to indicate that if any blood type, over time, lost its antibodies, it would eventually resemble type AB.

There are secondhand copies of Wilson & Schwortz' book available at Amazon.com as well as at ABE.com

>Any further info you might be able to provide would be greatly appreciated.

The above quote appears to be the best I have. Surprisingly there does not seem to be much in the Shroud literature on the topic of blood losing its distinctive antibodies over time and coming to resemble type AB blood.

Also, there may not be much (if anything) in the scientific literature about all blood types losing their distinctive antibodies over time and becoming the same as type AB (no antibodies), because it may not be of much use either to archaeology or forensic science, the former probably not being interested in blood types and the latter being only interested in comparatively recent blood.

However, if you or anyone find any information about this in the non-Shroud scientific literature, feel free to post it as a comment under this post.

>Best Regards,
>
>AN

Thanks again for your question. I hope this has helped answer it.

Posted: 18 March 2011. Updated: 19 June 2020.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

I read that type AB is the newest of blood types. Mostly starting only ten or twelve centuries ago. Is this true and what data supports this claim?

Stephen E. Jones said...

Anonymous

>I read that type AB is the newest of blood types. Mostly starting only ten or twelve centuries ago. Is this true and what data supports this claim?

Thanks for your comment. According to a Dr. Peter D'Adamo at http://www.dadamo.com/bloodtype_AB.htm:

"Type AB blood is rare – it’s found in less than five percent of the population. And it is the newest of the blood types. Until ten or twelve centuries ago, there was no Type AB blood type. Type AB resulted from the intermingling of Type A with Type B."

Whether this is true or not, I don't know. In fact I don't see how anyone could know for sure, since it presumably is impossible to test the type of centuries-old blood and all old human blood tends to become type AB.

And again the significance of the Shroud blood being type AB is that if it was anything else, e.g. type O, then that would be evidence against it being very old and evidence for it being European.

Stephen

Anonymous said...

Hi, I've been researching the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano, the Sudarium of Oviedo, and Shroud of Turin and came upon the claim of all blood becoming AB over time, so I searched for that and found your posting. I also found information on blood types of ancient Egypt and curiously, of the types listed in the research cited, AB is one of the least prevalent. Somehow, I don't think mummification would preserve the blood type that well if it is true that all blood eventually becomes AB over time. If it did, it seems it would do a better job preserving the rest of the body. Of course, I'm no scientist, but that's the way it seems to me. The only places on the internet that I have been able to find claims of all ancient blood types reverting to AB is in reference to the Shroud and links to other Jesus related evidence. Curious, isn't it?

domenico said...

As often D'Adamo's theory is quoted in order to criticize the authenticity of the Shroud (if AB blood is recent the Shroud or the blood can not be 2000 years old)
I would point out that Dr. D'Adamo is not a scientist.
Dr. D'Adamo has no scientific publications and his theory about recent AB blood is published in a diet book!

Prof. Gregory Thiemann from York University published an article criticizing this theory.
"Evolution, blood types, and weight-loss: A critical examination of a popular diet", Proceedings of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science 43.

"While it seems odd that Type AB didn't emerge until very recently despite the coexistence of Types A and B for at least 10000 years, D'Adamo & Whitney base their timelime on the fact that "prehistoric graves in Hungary show a distint lack of this blood groop".It would be interesting to know precisely how many graves were examinated considering that blood group AB is quite rare in the modern human population". (p.61)

"the various blood types therefore evolved before humans, chimpes or gorillas".. "It is clear that blood groups pre-date the exsistence of Homo spp." (p.63)

http://fatlab.biology.dal.ca/docs/data/thiemann-NSIS-2005.pdf

Bippy123 said...

Ok Schwartz maybe a good sturp photographer but I don't agree with him on ancient blood turning ab. I can't really post links since I'm on my iPod but tested king tuts blood from his tomb and it tested type ab.

If you want to come up with the excuse that the blood was preserved through the mummification process you can also make the case for the shroud because they found the blood on the shroud perfectly preserved probably from the aloe, myrr and other ingredients that were found on the shroud.

The info on this took me a few hours but thanks to my extreme scrupulosity I finally found it. This debunks the theory that all blood degrades to type ab

Stephen E. Jones said...

Bippy123

>This debunks the theory that all blood degrades to type ab

You haven't provided any evidence. Just assertions.

Admittedly I haven't seen any hard evidence that old blood does degrade to type AB, but since type AB is the absence of antibodies (see above), I assume that it is so.

What I would like to see is blood from a 2,000 year or older body that is not type AB. If you know of any that is in an authoritative source, e.g. a scientific journal, not just a web page that asserts it, I would appreciate you or anyone supplying the details in a comment.

Stephen E. Jones
-----------------------------------
Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. Each individual will usually be allowed only one comment under each post. Since I no longer debate, any response by me will usually be only once to each individual under each post.

bippy123 said...

Stephen as I said yesterday I am on my iPod and my bad luck tonight is that I am still on my iPod and unable to get to a pc to copy and paste the info.

It's frustrating though.

Try doing a search for king tut's blood type.
I think you will find some interesting info as we both know tut is older than 2000 years. It's times like these I wished I had a laptop.

In my former post I posted that tut had type ab, what I meant to say was type a2 which is definitely different than ab. Can anyone verify this about tut before I get to a desktop pc?

Stephen E. Jones said...

bippy123

>In my former post I posted that tut had type ab, what I meant to say was type a2 which is definitely different than ab.

Thanks for the correction.

>Can anyone verify this about tut before I get to a desktop pc?

Googling on "King Tut blood group A2" I found a number of hits, including this one:

"King Tut's Dad's Toe Returns Home," Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News, April 15, 2010 ... A toe belonging to King Tutankhamun’s father has been finally returned to Egypt, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said on Wednesday. The bone piece belonged to mummy KV55, which was identified as Akhenaton during a recent major genetic investigation into King Tut's family. The son of Amenhotep III and also the father of Tutankhamun, Akhenaton, (1353-1336 B.C.) is known as the "heretic" pharaoh who introduced a monotheistic religion by overthrowing the pantheon of the gods to worship the sun god Aton. The terminal phalanx of his great toe, probably from the left foot, was taken away in 1968, when the Department of Antiquities in Cairo, under the supervision of the then director, handed it over to the late Professor Ronald Harrison of Liverpool University. "Since then, the specimen has been held securely in my laboratory, but I decided it had to `go home,' particularly since very few people knew where it was," Robert Connolly senior lecturer in physical anthropology from the University of Liverpool's Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology, told Discovery News. Connolly, who authored several scientific papers with Harrison, used the specimen to determine the blood-group of KV55, then believed to be Smenkharel, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the late 18th Dynasty. "The remains appeared to be A2 with the antigens M and N present. This was identical to the blood group of Tutankhamun," Connolly said. ...

While not a scientific journal, I regard this Discovery News science news report as sufficiently authoritative, especially as it quoted Dr. Connolly's words: "The remains appeared to be A2 with the antigens M and N present," to establish that old blood does not necessarily degrade to AB. Especially bearing in mind that at 14th century BC King Akhenaton's (not Tutankhamun's) remains are much older than the Shroud's presumed 1st century AD.

Which means both the Shroud's and the Sudarium of Oviedo's blood group being AB is significant and cannot just be set aside by the claim that old blood always degrades to type AB.

I am more than happy to be corrected on this one! Thanks again for the tip-off.

Stephen E. Jones
-----------------------------------
Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. Each individual will usually be allowed only one comment under each post. Since I no longer debate, any response by me will usually be only once to each individual under each post.

Bippy123 said...

No prob Stephen, as we are nothing looking honestly for the truth here. If it wasn't for this blog I also would not have known this myself. It's incredible how my extreme scrupulosity lead me to the shroud of Turin.

You have a great blog Sir
God bless

Stephen E. Jones said...

Bippy123

See my subsequent post,
"King Tut's Dad's Toe Returns Home," in my Shroud of Turin News for February 2012, where I acknowledge:

"I was alerted by a commenter bippy123 ... that King Tutankhamun's blood type was A2."

Thanks again.

Stephen E. Jones

Bippy said...

I would also like to apologize to Barry Schwartz for my rash response. Sometimes my passion gets the better of me
God bless

bippy123 said...

Just saw the article Stephen, thanks a bunch :)
Hopefully this will get indexed quick by google so that other researchers could also get this out there.
The more people that know this the better.
Forgive me for the typos, arghhh, it's the iPod again

God bless

Stephen E. Jones said...

Bippy

>I would also like to apologize to Barry Schwartz for my rash response.

I am not sure what you are apologisng for, but his name is Barrie Schwortz and I know that he doesn't read my blog, let alone comments to it. He did not even realise that I had a Shroud of Turin blog until recently.

Stephen E. Jones

Stephen E. Jones said...

bippy123

>Hopefully this will get indexed quick by google so that other researchers could also get this out there.

Yes. That's why I posted it in my February 2012 Shroud News, even though it was 2010 news. As far as I know, no Shroudies saw it.

So thanks again for your contribution to Sindonology!

Stephen E. Jones

Flagrum3 said...

Hi Steve,

Further to this discussion on the blood typing and it's possible degradation; You may want to check out Dan's Shroud of Turin Blog as...

Immunologist Kelly P. Kearse has written a fine post to this very topic.

Thanks,

F3

Stephen E. Jones said...

Flagrum3

>... You may want to check out Dan's Shroud of Turin Blog as ... Immunologist Kelly P. Kearse has written a fine post to this very topic.

Thanks, I saw it: "MUST READ: A lot of old blood types as AB: Not Exactly.

I noted Kearse's summing up: "Is the blood on the Shroud type AB? Probably. ... it is best concluded that the results suggest that the Shroud bloodstains are type AB as shown by forward typing methods. To dilute the significance of these results by adding that "however, all old blood types as AB" or "all old blood is degraded to AB" unfairly oversimplifies the issue ... this is simply not always the case."

Good to have that factoid put back in its box!

"... serological typing has been successfully used in the study of mummies by Robert Connelly, including King Tutankhamun with blood type A."

And also to have it confirmed that the blood typing of 14th century BC Egyptian mummies as type A, was valid.

I also found this interesting, that the Shroud's blood type could in principle be absolutely confirmed by DNA:

"... Expression of human ABO blood groups is controlled by a single locus in exons (coding segments) 6 and 7 of chromosome 9. If molecular analysis of this region were feasible, such studies would help address previous concerns raised with serological techniques regarding the blood type."

Stephen E. Jones

Unknown said...

i heard that any postmortem blood gives AB grouping i mean to say blood taken during autopsy

Stephen E. Jones said...

radha

>i heard that any postmortem blood gives AB grouping i mean to say blood taken during autopsy

You don't cite any reference so I am unable to comment specifically on mere hearsay.

But your comment prompted me to repost today as a separate post, "Old blood does not always degenerate to type AB, so the Shroud of Turin's and the Sudarium of Oviedo's blood group being AB is significant!" my comments on the article "King Tut's Dad's Toe Returns Home," in my post "Shroud of Turin News for February 2012," referred to in comments above, where a family of ancient Egyptian mummies has a blood type which was not AB.

So what you heard, "that any postmortem blood gives AB grouping" is not true.

Stephen E. Jones
-----------------------------------
Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.

Anonymous said...

Testing is for antigens by adding antibodies so the above is false. However, the antigens are also proteins and will likely degrade just as antibodies would, so getting a blood type on 2000 year old blood would be nearly impossible unless it was determined from genetic testing. However, it seems that everyone is missing the elephant in the room. If Jesus had type AB blood it would mean, unless he received Mary’s complete chromosome makeup-as in two sets of 23, and she was type AB, Then he had two separate human parents!

Stephen E. Jones said...

Anonymous

As notified in my post of 07Sep18, I discovered on 9 September 2018 that Blogger had not been notifying me by email of comments and therefore I had a backlog of 37 of them! Which I am working through from the most recent backwards. And that I am now receiving email notification of comments by Blogger. But my responses have to be brief until I catch up.

>Testing is for antigens by adding antibodies so the above is false.

No. The Shroud blood has been tested by qualified blood specialists and it does give an AB blood group result.

But as stated above, the major points are not that the Shroud blood is type AB, but: 1) it is real human blood; and 2) if the Shroud blood had a different blood type from the Sudarium of Oviedo, which is also AB, then that would be a problem.

>However, the antigens are also proteins and will likely degrade just as antibodies would, so getting a blood type on 2000 year old blood would be nearly impossible unless it was determined from genetic testing.

No. See my post of 14Jul12 where a mummified toe of Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaton (c.1353-1336 BC), i.e. ~14 centuries before Jesus, was tested and found to be "A2 with the antigens M and N present."

If blood type A2 (a variant of A) can be identified in blood that is ~34 centuries old, then there is no reason in principle that the Shroud (and Sudarium's) blood cannot be identified as AB. Bearing in mind that both the Shroud and the Sudarium have been in protected environments over less than 2000 years.

>However, it seems that everyone is missing the elephant in the room. If Jesus had type AB blood it would mean, unless he received Mary’s complete chromosome makeup-as in two sets of 23, and she was type AB, Then he had two separate human parents!

No. Jesus would have received Mary's 22+X chromosomes (including the blood type chromosome 9) and He would have received from God the Holy Spirit (Mt 1:18,20; Lk 1:30-31,34-35) 22+Y chromosomes (also including chromosome 9).

Your anonymous comment is similar to that I received today less than an hour apart under my post of 16Nov10, that I assume they are both from you.

I will respond to it (and this last point) more fully in a separate post.

As per my policy below, this has been your last comment under this post. However, you can comment under my separate post when it appears.

Stephen E. Jones
----------------------------------
MY POLICIES. Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. Except that comments under my latest post can be on any Shroud-related topic. I normally allow only one comment per individual under each one of my posts.

Stephen E. Jones said...

Anonymous

>I will respond to it (and this last point) more fully in a separate post.

See my post, "`If Jesus had type AB blood it would mean... he had two separate human parents!'"

Stephen E. Jones