One Person Can Change the World

In 1951, a 14-year-old Australian boy named James Harrison had major surgery to save his life, the removal of one of his lungs.  He was alive, thanks in large part to a vast quantity of transfused blood he had received.  He was hospitalized for three months but when he came out, he was determined to pay it forward by donating blood himself.  The problem was Australia’s laws required blood donors to be at least 18 years old. After turning 18, Harrison made good on his promise, and despite a fear of needles, he began to donate blood regularly.

At the time, doctors in Australia were struggling to figure out why thousands of births in the country were resulting in miscarriages, stillbirths or brain defects for the babies.  In 1967, they discovered the babies were suffering from Haemolytic Disease of the Newborn, or HDN. The condition arises when a woman with an Rh negative blood type becomes pregnant with a baby who has Rh positive blood, and the incompatibility causes the mother’s body to reject the fetus’s red blood cells.

Doctors in Australia discovered that a very rare antibody in blood called Anti-D could be used to make a lifesaving medication that when given to mothers whose blood is at risk of developing HDN would keep the baby safe.  Researchers scoured blood banks to see whose blood might contain this antibody and found a donor in New South Wales named James Harrison.  Scientists asked him to participate in an experimental Anti-D program that turned out to be effective in saving these babies.

For more than 60 years, Harrison donated blood every single week and his plasma was used to make millions of Anti-D injections.  Every ampoule of Anti-d ever made in Australia has a piece of James in it. Because about 17% of pregnant women in Australia require the Anti-D injections, the Australian blood service estimates that Harrison has helped 2.4 million babies in the country.

James Harrison (Tara Delia/Australian Red Cross Blood Service)

After donating 1,100 times, at 81 years old, despite wanting to continue, James Harrison was forced to retire from donating blood.  James Harrison, appropriately nicknamed “The man with the golden arm,” passed away last month at the age of 88, one person who without exaggeration saved millions of lives.

Don’t underestimate your power to positively impact the world when you simply care enough to step up instead of sitting back.

One person can make an enormous difference with the right word in the right moment and we never know which word and which moment.

Queen Esther didn’t want to go to Achashverosh without being invited; she hesitated to reveal her true identity and wanted to continue to keep it a secret.  Esther preferred the passive route, the spectator position.

But thanks to Mordechai’s encouragement and power of persuasion, she mustered the courage and conviction to enter without invitation, to speak despite the risk. The result was one woman saved an entire nation.  Purim highlights the power to go from passive to active, from bystander to bringing about redemption.  Don’t underestimate your power to positively impact the world when you simply care enough to step up instead of sitting back.

James Harrison saved millions of babies in Australia.  Queen Esther, with one act of sacrifice and courage, saved the Jewish people.

To the world, you may be one person, but to one person, you may be what saves their world.

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