The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Terminators and Transfusions
The Set-Up: Derek Reese, John Connor’s uncle, has been shot and severely wounded. He needs a transfusion, but since he’s a wanted man Sarah doesn’t want to take him to the hospital and instead elects to perform a transfusion in the kitchen. She offers her blood, but since she is O- and Derek is AB- her ex-fiancé (an EMT) tells her it won’t work; Derek needs an exact match. John offers his blood and it must be a match because we see him a short time later transfusing his blood into Derek.
Though Sarah Connor is blood type O- (known as the “universal donor”) she cannot donate blood to Derek because this is a whole blood transfusion. In a normal transfusion, just the red blood cells are transfused, but in a whole blood transfusion both the blood cells and blood plasma (i.e. the “whole blood”) are used. The blood cells carry the proteins that determine a person’s blood type, but the plasma carries antibodies that react against other blood types. Because a whole blood transfusion deals with both blood cells and plasma (and proteins and antibodies), the donor and recipient blood types need to match exactly or there will be a nasty transfusion reaction.
AB- is the rarest blood type. In the general population of the United States, about 1 person in 167 (roughly 0.7%) are AB-, though blood type distribution can vary greatly by race.
| TYPES | DISTRIBUTION | PERCENT |
| O + | 1 person in 3 | 38.4% |
| O - | 1 person in 15 | 7.7% |
| A + | 1 person in 3 | 32.3% |
| A - | 1 person in 16 | 6.5% |
| B + | 1 person in 12 | 9.4% |
| B - | 1 person in 67 | 1.7% |
| AB + | 1 person in 29 | 3.2% |
| AB - | 1 person in 167 | 0.7% |
The most important aspect of the transfusion seems to have been entirely missed by the writers: since Sarah has blood type O-, that means that she cannot be John’s mother. John gave Derek a transfusion so he must be AB-. That means that he inherited an A gene from one parent and a B gene from the other (A + B =AB). Sarah is blood type O which means that she has neither an A nor a B gene to pass on to John. Blood type O parents can only have A, B, or O children, depending on the blood type of the other parent. They can never have AB children*.
Miscellaneous nit-picks:
That sure was a tiny IV to transfuse 3 units of blood through. It would have taken the better part of a day.
What sort of EMT strolls around carrying a sedative in their bag (and given the small dose needed to work, it must be a controlled substance, such as Ativan or Valium) or has blood typing serum?
A “manual aspirator to drain the lung” — what the heck does that mean? Did he mean a chest tube?
*I guess John could be a spontaneous mutation, or maybe a liver-transplant recipient, but those are both quite a stretch.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:33 am
you say blood type “can vary greatly by race”. yet your link states “The average distribution of blood types among racial and ethnic groups in the United States population varies slightly.”
greatly and slightly and not the same thing.
see how ideas about race being real get propagated. ‘race’ according to anthropologists and sociologists is not a biological reality it is a social construct that our society has given a material presence in the world.
i found the other information in your post helpful tho.
its a great show
February 20th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Official Comment
I was looking at the numbers in the chart, not at the accompanying text. To me, those numbers show substantial variation, not the slight differences the text mentions (check out blood type B+ for instance).
As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter how you choose to define race — or even if you choose to define it — but it is a biological fact that the distribution of blood types is quite different among different ethnicities and/or races (less so in the last century, admittedly, but still demonstrably present).
February 20th, 2008 at 10:46 am
It’s funny; when I was watching the show I found myself thinking, “Hmm, I wonder what Scott would have to say about all of this? Too bad he doesn’t review this.”
February 20th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I saw the show and was wondering if you watched it too.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Official Comment
That was actually the first time I’ve watched it. I received 5 e-mails yesterday from readers about the transfusion scene, so I figured I should check it out. Luckily, FOX had already put it online so I could easily watch it (thank you, FOX). Nitpicking and poor understanding of blood types aside, I thought it was a pretty good show, so I expect I’ll keep watching it.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
“Terminator: SCC - Come for the medicine, stay for the nuclear war!”
And while it is just poor medicine, considering that JC is just one step away from immaculate conception, I wouldn’t be too quick to dimiss “mutation”. Who knows what the heck time travel did to (half of) his chrmosomes.
But as long as his transfusions don;t start ressurecting the dead. Or casting demons into pigs…
February 20th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
What would be really awesome is if it turned out that Kyle Reese *WAS* John Connor. It wouldn’t necessarily contradict with anything shown so far (given that we still haven’t seen adult John Connor in any context (including the movies), and there’s the whole thing about how Kyle is always carrying Sarah’s picture with him everywhere).
Also, on the blood typing thing, just because John’s uncle is AB-, that doesn’t mean Kyle was AB-, and of course it’s even more of a stretch to assume John was AB- even if Sarah weren’t O-.
February 20th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Two oddball ways for type O parent to have type AB child:
1) Partner has a translocation of one allele onto the opposite chromosome, thereby carrying an A (or B) chromosome and and AB chromosome (the mutation you mentioned), or
2) parent’s genotype is A or B but also nonsecretor (doesn’t allow the A/B tag onto the outside of the blood cells, thereby being phenotypically “O”.
(Please pardon the technobabble.)
February 20th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Dr. Scott, what about tranfusion scenes in Heroes? There’s one in ‘Out of Time’ and another one in the comic ‘Blackout’.
February 20th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
race as a concept is scientifically valid if it is kept as a statistical description of the charcteristics of a given population. Anything that goes beyond that would become absurd. So I would be careful about drawing a hasty conclusion about a “biological reality” from that simple table alone. Besides, I read it as confirming a general blood-type distribution rate across the board; O+ is the largest group in all groups, followed by A+, probably B+ next … in the end, regardless of how much Negroid or Causcasian blood you have, AB- is the rarest.
February 21st, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Oh heavens, people, the explanation is quite simple. Sarah (TV) Connor doesn’t have the necessary blood type to be the mother of an AB- child because she’s not the same actress as Sarah (movie) Connor!
:D
Scott, add me to the list of people whose first thought was “I wonder what Scott would say about this”.
February 21st, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Sarah could be have the Bombay mutation- leaving her phenotypically O but genotypically anything
February 21st, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Thanks so much for tackling this one!
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:55 am
Fluffy: What would be really awesome is if it turned out that Kyle Reese *WAS* John Connor. It wouldn’t necessarily contradict with anything shown so far (given that we still haven’t seen adult John Connor in any context (including the movies), and there’s the whole thing about how Kyle is always carrying Sarah’s picture with him everywhere).
I’m not versed in temporal incest, but wouldn’t Kyle/John be getting MORE inbred each time then? He’s Sarah’s son, he goes back in time and smexes her, the John/Kyle born now would be from Sarah and her son, he lives, goes back in time, smexes her again, now the child of Sarah and her son, is having sex with Sarah again.. and the result would be.. even more inbred wouldn’t it?
And on and on to infinity and beyond! :O
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:23 am
Re: fluffy
Er, we actually *have* seen adult/future John Connor: he appears very briefly in the beginning of T2 and was played by Michael Edwards, so having John/Kyle be the same person would create a conflict.
Plus: yeeesh! I found it creepy enough when he was just sending his friend back in time to be his dad, the idea of John himself going back in time to impregnate his Mum is just a whole ‘nother kind of weird.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:16 am
I suppose they could be setting us up for a mid-season reveal in which a totally new kid character shows up who is the real John Connor - Sarah having switched him at birth with a decoy….
February 24th, 2008 at 12:43 am
“Also, on the blood typing thing, just because John’s uncle is AB-, that doesn’t mean Kyle was AB-, and of course it’s even more of a stretch to assume John was AB- even if Sarah weren’t O-.”
I think we can conclude that John’s supposed to have turned out to be AB- given that we see him giving a direct whole blood transfusion to Derek in the latest episode of T:TSCC.
I also thought about the Bombay phenotype fanwank…er, option. (Yes, I know it happens in real life, but c’mon, we all know that the “Terminator” writers weren’t sitting around going, “Ah hah, we know that an O parent can’t have an AB kid, but we’ll explain it using the Bombay phenotype!”) Arguably the most famous case of the Bombay phenotype being used in popular culture occurred on “General Hospital” in the late ’70s/early ’80s - Alan Quartermaine, Jr., was believed to be the son of Rick Webber after his blood tested as O, but turned out to really be the son of Alan Quartermaine, Sr., with the explanation being that the younger Alan had the Bombay phenotype. On the most recent episode of “Terminator,” Kyle Reese was portrayed by Jonathan Jackson, who is still most famous for portraying Luke “Lucky” Spencer Jr. on…”General Hospital.”
And yes, we have seen the adult John Connor in the movies, and he was not played by Michael Biehn. Look, I loved “All You Zombies,” but I don’t think it would translate well to mainstream movies and/or TV.
March 1st, 2008 at 1:06 pm
You are so right and I wanted to email FOX but thought I would check on-line first. No wonder those stupid writers went on strike. Bring back 24 where everyones blood is one type…splattered on the pavement or wall…long live Jack Baur.
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