Stephen Jones Clarifies Old Blood AB Issue
Stephen Jones writes, “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!” Long title? Yes! But here is why and if you missed it the first time it is worth reading his latest posting:
I am reposting this excerpt from my "Shroud of Turin News for February 2012," because I have been asked a comment about the topic under my old, superseded post, "Re: Shroud blood … types as AB … aged blood always types as AB, so the significance of this … is unclear." The commenter may not have been able to find, using a search engine, my update under the uninformative title of "Shroud of Turin News."
You should also read, “A lot of old blood types as AB: Not Exactly” on this blog from this past February, which starts out as follows and contains some 53 comments:
Kelly P. Kearse, a card-carrying immunologist writes:
I appreciate the opportunity to address the issue that “All old blood types as AB”, particularly in reference to the study of the Shroud. The idea that “aged blood is degraded to (or reverts to) type AB” is rather misleading.
Blood typing is typically performed using two distinct methods that measure two very different things. First, there isforward typing, which measures the presence of specific molecules on the surfaces of red blood cells (RBC): the ABO molecules. Second, there is reverse typing, which measures the presence of antibodies in the serum (essentially the fluid component of blood), specifically the presence of antibodies to ABO blood group molecules. Both forward and reverse typing methods have been utilized in the study of the Shroud.
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Is the Shroud real? Probably.
The Shroud of Turin may be the real burial cloth of Jesus. The carbon dating, once seemingly proving it was a medieval fake, is now widely thought of as suspect and meaningless. Even the famous Atheist Richard Dawkins admits it is controversial. Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, thinks more testing is needed. So do many other scientists and archeologists. This is because there are significant scientific and non-religious reasons to doubt the validity of the tests. Chemical analysis, all nicely peer-reviewed in scientific journals and subsequently confirmed by numerous chemists, shows that samples tested are chemically unlike the whole cloth. It was probably a mixture of older threads and newer threads woven into the cloth as part of a medieval repair. Recent robust statistical studies add weight to this theory. Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon dating results were published, recently wrote: “It’s fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever.” If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested – and some evidence suggests that – it is possible that the cloth is from the time of Christ.
No one has a good idea how front and back images of a crucified man came to be on the cloth. Yes, it is possible to create images that look similar. But no one has created images that match the chemistry, peculiar superficiality and profoundly mysterious three-dimensional information content of the images on the Shroud. Again, this is all published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
We simply do not have enough reliable information to arrive at a scientifically rigorous conclusion. Years ago, as a skeptic of the Shroud, I came to realize that while I might believe it was a fake, I could not know so from the facts. Now, as someone who believes it is the real burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, I similarly realize that a leap of faith over unanswered questions is essential.
My name is Dan Porter. Please email me at DanielRobertPorter@gmail.com
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