Bags of human blood are filtrated and scanned at the production and logistics center of the Bavarian Red Cross blood donation service in Wiesentheid, southern Germany, on July 24, 2012. (David Ebener/AFP/GettyImages)

Forty years ago, a young Swiss boy was brought to a Geneva hospital for treatment of a fairly routine childhood infection. When his blood was drawn and tested, doctors noticed an oddity they initially thought was an error.

After further testing they discovered something that only a few doctors even knew was possible: the child, named Thomas, had blood so rare that many thought he should not be alive.

His rare blood is called Rh-null and while he’s not quite the only person who has it, only 43 people in the world were found to have it over the past five decades.

The peculiarity and value of Thomas’s blood has, in many ways shaped his life. His physician, the director of the National Immunohematology Reference Lab in Paris has called him, “The Man with the Golden Blood,” and researchers are clamoring to study it. And if a patient with a rare blood group — even a different one — needs a transfusion, Rh-null blood can be their only hope of survival.

British author Penny Bailey chronicled the story of Thomas, and others with extremely rare blood, in her article “The Man with the Golden Blood,” published recently in the online science magazine “Mosaic.” She joins Here & Now‘s Robin Young from Bristol, England, along with Nicole Thornton, the head of the International Blood Group Reference Laboratory in the U.K., to discuss Thomas’s case, the rules and regulations around blood donation and the complicated lives of people with extremely rare blood.

Guest

• Penny Bailey, author of “The Man with the Golden Blood.”
• Nicole Thornton, head of the International Blood Group Reference Laboratory.