I read the letter you posted from “Mr. Lima” about what his friend “W” had told him. Other than knowing your blood type ahead of time, the rest of the letter is wrong. I’m not sure if “Lima” misunderstood “W.” or if “W.” only works in a lab on samples and machines and has never had any patient contact or he just mistook one substance for another after so many years in the lab. FWIW, the laboratories and blood banks in today’s hospitals are two separate and different departments. Short and sweet: EDTA anticoagulated blood can (and mostly likely always will) kill a person. EDTA has never been used (at least not since the days of trying to infuse humans with cows blood) to anticoagulate donor blood and has never been available in “blood donor bags from the blood bank”. EDTA bonds with calcium (irreversibly) and prevents clotting in blood sample tubes (vacutainers) and has seen some use in certain lab machinery. EDTA is a chemical compound and has other issues that could cause massive problems to a person aside from coagulopathy, it would alter a persons blood chemistry and I can only make educated guesses as to the outcomes since no data is available on EDTA entering a person’s vascular system. EDTA bonds with calcium because it is a metal ion, which means any metal ions in the blood (and finally the body) could be bonded. All those ‘guesses’ would result in major systemic problems that would invariably lead to death, 99%+ could be assured in a SHTF situation and not much better even with access to modern medicine. Coumadin (a.k.a. Warfarin) is not an anticoagulant in the sense of preventing clotting when drawing blood. Warfarin drugs work by inhibiting certain functions of the body from producing different factors that make up the clotting cascade. This is why they are commonly referred to as ‘blood thinners’. Obviously giving Coumadin to prevent immediate clotting won’t work, because it doesn’t deactivate the clotting cascade, it just prevents certain factors from being replaced once they expire normally in the body. It is unlike Heparin in that Heparin works immediately to interrupt the cascade rather than removing a factor or two. Getting blood bags with Citrate (CPDA-1 or ACD-A) from the blood bank is what a person would want and is also my personal choice. I keep some Heparin as well as a backup, but I wouldn’t use it until I exhaust my supply of CPDA-1 bags. So, never give Coumadin in the field. If there is some sort of need to ‘thin’ a patient’s blood (high blood pressure perhaps) then go on an aspirin regimen. Another bonus of Citrate as an anticoagulant is that once the blood is back into a person’s body the calcium in there body replaces the bound calcium and you almost instantly viable platelets again! Thus you kill two birds with one stone. Fresh RBCs and more coagulation factors and platelets to stop the bleeding. It’s really a beautiful thing. If you have any atheist friends, tell them to learn about blood. Just blood. Once they know it, I would be surprised if they can still deny that Divine intervention led to our existence. The complexity of how everything works just to form a clot a clot, let alone fix the clot is astounding. That is another topic however. In the future I would suggest getting some independent people to review some of the letters you put on the blog before you post them. I don’t know where anyone would find EDTA easily other that breaking open those vacutainers and just the thought of that sends chills down my spine. EDTA is used in cases of lead poisoning, but it’s is a sterilized and specific format. The patient’s blood gases and values must be constantly monitored to ensure no harm comes to the patient. This is not the same thing as the EDTA powder in laboratory vacutainers! I would be more than happy to review the hematology aspects of those posts, however I like most medical professionals are like insects. We specialize and I have already forgotten a lot of that too 🙁 I’m working on that as part of my preparations as well. I love the blog and keep it up!
P.S.: If you have free time (wishful thinking) drop by AssaultWeb.net, we have a good group of Christian Patriots on the board.
JWR Replies: Thanks for setting us straight, Buckaroo! I will remove that erroneous post so that nobody mistakenly refers to it in the future.