Other Functions Than Carrying Oxygen
The functions of blood are many. Normally, for example, white blood cells defend against disease, platelets allow clotting, and blood proteins perform various functions. In addition, the blood composition includes additional molecules and electrolytes to function properly. Some of these components are substitutable with modern technology, and may, at least, be added to an oxygen-carrying blood substitute to create a more complete blood substitute.
Volume expanders may theoretically be called a blood substitutes as well, but in practice they are usually not within the scope of blood substitutes. Still, they are sometimes called "plasma substitutes".
Read more about this topic: Blood Substitute
Famous quotes containing the words functions, carrying and/or oxygen:
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“The dog barks, the caravan passes on.
The words had a sort of bloom on them
But were weightless, carrying past what was being said.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“All the oxygen of the world was in them.
All the feet of the babies of the world were in them.
All the crotches of the angels of the world were in them.
All the morning kisses of Philadelphia were in them.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)