James Christopher Harrison was born on December 27, 1936, in Sydney, Australia, but spent much of his life in Alabama, USA, where he moved later in life. However, his legacy began in his teenage years back in Australia, where he underwent major chest surgery at age 14 — requiring 34 units of blood to survive. After recovering, he made a promise to himself: if he could find out his blood type and help others, he would give back.
At 18, Harrison began donating blood regularly. During one of his early donations, doctors discovered something extraordinary — his plasma contained a rare antibody known as Anti-D , which is found in less than 1 in 5,000 people. This antibody was crucial for developing a treatment for Rh incompatibility , a potentially fatal condition where a pregnant woman’s blood attacks her unborn baby’s red blood cells due to an Rh-negative blood type mismatch.
Before the development of the Anti-D injection , Rh disease caused thousands of miscarriages, stillbirths, or infant deaths each year in the U.S. and around the world. Harrison’s blood became a vital component in creating this life-saving injection.
For over 60 years, Harrison traveled weekly to blood donation centers to give plasma. Each donation took about an hour and a half, and he did it without fail. By the time he retired from donating in 2018 at the age of 81 (due to Australian blood donation rules capping donations at age 81), he had given blood more than 1,100 times , directly helping to create millions of doses of the Anti-D vaccine.
His contributions have been credited with saving over 2 million babies’ lives worldwide. In the United States alone, the Anti-D injection has significantly reduced cases of Rh disease, making it almost preventable today.
James Harrison passed away on March 5, 2023, in Australia at the age of 86, but his legacy lives on in every child who was born healthy thanks to his selfless generosity.
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