• Question: what would happen to us if we had no blood?

    Asked by madeleineh to Jen, Jill, Mel, Phil, Stef on 14 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Jennifer Paxton

      Jennifer Paxton answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      Quite simply…..we would die.

      Your blood contains red blood cells that carry oxygen around your body and keep your tissues healthy. If there was no blood, there would be no oxygen. Your blood also contains white blood cells that are important to fight infections – so if we couldn’t fight the infections, we would die.

    • Photo: Melissa Brereton

      Melissa Brereton answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      You would die! We need blood to carry oxygen to all the cells in our body so they can work properly!

    • Photo: Phil Rice

      Phil Rice answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      Blood is essential to large animals (anything thicker than a thin straw) as oxygen will not diffuse quickly enough through thicker tissues. So although blood contains white cells to fight infection, we would not contract any because we would be dead within 2-3 minutes of losing all our blood. Incidentally a virus of humans (parvovirus) can lead to almost a complete loss of haemoglobin in patients with red blood cell diseases (such as sickle cell anaemia and thalassaemia). This is a medical emergency.

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