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 Substitutes
Famous quotes containing the words functions, carrying and/or oxygen:
“If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“My mother learned that she was carrying me at about the same time the Second World War was declared; with the family talent for magic realism, she once told me she had been to the doctor’s on the very day.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“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)