The distribution of ABO blood groups in a sample of hospital patients receiving blood transfusions

At the present time there is great interest in efforts to increase our understanding of the nature of the selective agents which act on the ABO blood group system. Brues (’54) presents many of the arguments in support of the view that the ABO genes are subject to natural selection. The foundations for work on the physiological functions of this genetic system and the selective mechanisms that operate on it were laid many years ago by investigators such as Ehrlich and Morgenroth ( ’00) and Dienst (’05). Dienst proposed that eclampsia was due to antagmism between the blood of the fetus and its mother. He compared the process resulting in eclampsia to blood transfusions between different mammalian species. The response to this idea was typified by Liepmann (’05) who declared that this was a “biological monstrosity.’’ It was unthinkable that a mother’s blood would damage the child she was carrying. Since the Hirzsfelds ( ’19) demonstrated that there are differences in ABO frequencies among various populations and racial groups, the discovery of more differences in population ABO frequencies and their use as racial criteria have become anthropological traditions. The literature contains reports of the ABO distribution in thousands of human groups, based on samples ranging in size from fifty to over two hundred thousand. Yet none of these studies describes the ABO frequencies with respect to the age and sex composition of the population tested. Glass (’54) points out that