Exchange Transfusions — A Cure for Vampires?

December 7th, 2008

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

There are some strange murders in a small southern town, and Velma, the beautiful newcomer, is suspected of being a vampire (after all, the local medical examiner staked his reputation on it). She is arrested by the local police and chained to a bed. A young policeman named Mike is assigned to watch over her and see if she turns into a vampire when the sun goes down.

Velma talks to Mike and confesses that she indeed is a vampire. She blames it on a family curse (she explains that she is the seventh daughter of a seventh son of a cursed noble line). However, she tells Mike that a complete blood transfusion can beat the curse. He agrees to her plan and raids the local blood bank for the needed supplies and performs the transfusion. Sure enough, the transfusion works, and she does not turn into a vampire. Velma is released, and shortly thereafter she and Mike fall in love and get married.

scene from Web of Mystery #27

A happy ending? If this were a romance story, sure — but this is a horror comic, and happy endings are few and far between. While the blood transfusion does work, its effects are only temporary. The rest you can read for yourself…

center

vampirismThe character in the story is not this Velma, though her being a vampire would make a certain amount of sense.

vampirismAccording to first part of this story, vampirism is an inherited condition. Likely recessive (this is yet another reason why cousins shouldn’t marry) with low penetrance (the number of people with the correct genes who actually express the condition).

vampirismLater in the story, the vampirism is passed from person to person via bite, which suggests an infectious cause. Both inherited and infectious? There are certainly infectious diseases that can be passed from mother to child (syphilis, herpes, CMV, HIV etc.), but nothing like this.

“Thinking Way Too Much About It” Department: If I had to theorize, I would propose that vampirism as portrayed in this story is an inherited prion disease. Individuals who inherit the condition have inherited mutant genes which code for the abnormal prion proteins — which then circulate in the blood. These prions cause the symptoms, so flushing them out with a transfusion will leave the recipient free from vampirism — at least until their body has enough time to manufacture more prions. A single mutated gene is not produce enough prions to have an effect, so both of the genes have to be mutated (hence the recessive inheritance). Furthermore, some people are more susceptible to the prions than others, which explains the variable penetrance (to avoid dying out of vampirism, most people in the affected royal family express another gene which protects them from the prions. Every few generations, a person is born who inherits the vampirism condition but lacks the protective gene, like poor Velma. This protective gene is also missing from the general population — which explains why victims are so susceptible to vampire bites). A person bitten would have these prions passed into their system, so they would begin to show symptoms as well. Of course, by this theory, the vampirism spread by bites wouldn’t be heritable; only the original victim would be affected that way. Nothing in the story seems to contradict this. (Now, if you want the bite to be both infectious and heritable, then I think a virus of some sort would be the most likely cause.)

vampirismThis story, “One Door from Disaster,” appeared in Web of Mystery #27 (1954) and was showcased on The Horrors of It All blog.

vampirismOther Comic Book Transfusions

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4 Responses to “ Exchange Transfusions — A Cure for Vampires? ”

  1. Sean Duggan
    December 8th, 2008 at 12:37 am

    “A single mutated gene is not produce” probably should be “A single mutated gene does not produce”

    Somehow, the full blood transfusion reminds me of the original planned ending of 28 Days Later where the soldiers never show up, the group eventually finds a scientist who worked on the original Rage project, and they cure the father by giving him every drop of the main male protagonist’s blood. This was scrapped in part because they felt that it was far too unlikely that all of the blood could be replaced given a single drop of blood to the eye was all it took to turn the father.

    There’s also the possibility that the vampirism somehow accrues with successive generations who inherit the trait in much the same way that polydactyl kittens tend to have one more toe than their parent (documented cases have topped out with somewhere along the lines of 17 toes on each foot, with the hind legs actually having bifurcated to become more than one leg). Thus, the trait might get passed down bit by bit with successive generations becoming more sensitive to the sun and requiring more blood, assuming of course that they get the gene (obviously, accrual is more likely if you make it a dominant gene like polydactyly)

  2. Bosda Di'Chi
    December 8th, 2008 at 7:45 am

    Hmmm…the story ends with the vampire drained of blood by mosquitoes.

    Let us hope that prion-based disease cannot be spread by insect vectors.

  3. Jayunderscorezero
    December 9th, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    This seems a lot like the plot of the film Near Dark. The writers of that claim that the transfusion-as-vampirism-cure idea goes back to Stoker, although supposedly even they questioned its likelihood. In a penned but unfilmed alternate ending the “cured” vampire was supposed to revert (explosively so, due to reversion in broad daylight).

  4. swisswiss
    January 6th, 2009 at 8:45 am

    Sadly, this is one condition where we’ll never see fund drives to FIND THE CURE. Resources are better spent on psychotherapeutic treatment and palliative care. A hospice dedicated to vampires would be an interesting solution.

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