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Comment by etatoby | Hacker News Reader

I think older civilizations may have discovered something like this and put it into practice, giving rise to the myth of Vampires.

The Vampires of lore are described as very old people who suck the blood of youngsters to stay alive. The parts about them fearing sunlight, or garlic, or whatever, might just be based on side-effects of this cure for ageing. The inaccuracy of "sucking" instead of transfusion, might be because nobody survived to recount the exact way in which vampires took their blood and what they did with it. All they knew was that bodies of young people would sometimes be found, drained of blood and with tiny syringe-like marks on their necks.

In fact, they might still be among us, ruling our world from the shadows :-)

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That would be quite amazing.

I tend to think the stories are cover for warnings about people that did have power. The prince sucking the very blood of the villagers is a nice metaphor for the prince taking the resources they need to thrive.

Also based on Lord Byron and (arguably) high functioning sociopaths. https://publicdomainreview.org/2014/10/16/the-poet-the-physi...

Hum, no. If you you drink someone's blood it goes trough your digestive system and it's processed that way, it doesn't become your blood, just provides you some nutrients.

Besides you do that almost everyday, i.e. eat animals younger than you and in certain cuisines part of their blood.

This here is something very different, allowing the blood to be used as is from an young individual in an older one.

I did mention that the part about drinking the blood might be an inaccuracy of the Vampire legend. It's obvious you can't just drink it.

Reminds me of this.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel

What if the major blood donation organizations like Red Cross and United Blood Services are actually run by vampires that secretly use the youngest donated blood for themselves, while giving the older blood to hospitals??

They do already take blood donations and then sell them for substantial amounts of money.

I thought that vampires were an allegory for people with an economic or social advantage extracting rent and interest from the younger or more ignorant.

I recently read that ancient mongoles would drink their horses blood in dire need.

The Maasai people in Africa have and still drink cow's blood as part of their diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people#Diet

There's also blood sausage[1], varieties of which are consumed all over the world.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_sausage

I hate those, they stink really bad. My family loves it.

Also called Tote Oma (dead granny)

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