Well, Ladies,
MANY, MANY thanks to all who have responded. What it all means I am not sure, but I wanted to add this tidbit of history to the board to let you all ponder it. The general theory is that Rh negative blood originated in the Basque area long, long, long ago and eventually diffused outwards to certain parts of Europe. As you know, the native Basque language is NOT related to any other language on earth...so the language and the heredity of this group is one of the most rare and least understood of human origins.
Q17. Are the Basques genetically different from other Europeans?
A17. Apparently, yes. It has long been known that the Basques have the highest proportion of rhesus-negative blood in Europe (25%), and one of the highest percentages of type-O blood (55%). Recently, however, the geneticist Luiga Luca Cavalli-Sforza has completed a gene map of the peoples of Europe, and he finds the Basques to be strikingly different from their neighbors. The genetic boundary between Basques and non-Basques is very sharp on the Spanish side. On the French side, the boundary is more diffuse: it shades off gradually toward the Garonne in the north. These findings are entirely in agreement with what we know of the history of the language.
Q18. Does this mean the Basques are directly descended from the earliest known human inhabitants of Europe, the Cro-Magnon people who occupied western Europe around 35,000 years ago?
A18. Nobody knows. This is possible, but we have no real evidence either way. The only evidence we have is negative: the archeologists can find no evidence for any sudden change in population in the area for thousands of years before the arrival of the Celts and later the Romans in the first millennium BC. --cut and pasted from
http://goeurope.about.com/cs/basque/l/bl_basque_map.htm
It is also possible this type may some how be interconnected with the Neandertal species of homo sapien, but this is still pure speculation although there is some research called the theory of "the wave" that may support it. Physical traits possibly related would be widow's peak, large head, having to give birth by c-section as baby's head too large to pass through birth canal, a baby born with unusually mature neck muscles, can move own neck to nurse first time, a person with heavy thicker/ shorter bones, and or a memory that functions differently, more like a database retrival system with cognitive associative recall, traits of autism and asperger syndrome traits, the ability to perceive thoughts and happenings at a distance without need for direct exchange of what is considered normal communication, astigmatism, and possibly red hair...although this is known to have entered the British Isle's from the Vikings, but where did it originate???
I have two ROUGH hypotheses that I am examining with this question: One is that if a mother gives birth to a child of opposite positive OR negative status from herself, some changes may take place in hers and or the baby's immune system that could cause the system not to recognize cancer in a way similarly to how the immune system does not recognize a different neg or pos child, if it did, and as happens sometimes, the immune system would try to kill the child, or if the childs opposite blood mixes with the mothers and she is negative, the mother would be in danger and this is why those of us who have negative blood with positive children of a certain age were given the Rhogam shot, although as Irene from Tampa so aptly points out, this option was not available until the late 60s. That is the first thing I am researching. Of course the Rhogam shot has been implemented in so many things, about like vaccines, but again, it IS interesting to note, even from our small sampling here, that in cases where both the mother and the daughter have breast cancer, the older mother (except for Tom's) is usually her-2 negative while the younger daughter, perhaps born in the late 60's is her-2 positive. It is also interesting to note that usually her-2 is striking young women...I was 33, I saw at least one case on the board that was 29, many of us are now 40 something to 50 something...having either been born in or lived through the 60's...hmmmm...intriguing.
The second sort of exciting hypothesis is that all of us who are her-2 +++
may share some sort of common ancestory going WAY, WAY back to origins of modern homo sapiens. Meaning the her-2 connection is perhaps not as immuno related as it is heredity. If you read the part above about 25% of all Basque folks having Rh negative and a whopping 55% having type O, what we at least surmise is the oldest blood type, and then you read these postings we have here under just this board..you will see that that of those who did respond, even the one's who were not themselves negative blooded, had a mother or a child who was opposite of them. And almost all had some connection to a negative blooded family member.
This is very interesting. I will continue to pursue it as a hobby more than actual serious research as time permits, although I do think we may all learn in the end that we are indeed united, if not as true "sisters" , perhaps as very distant cousins..smile. Her-2 has seemed connected with so many less than happy things, wouldn't it be great if we found out something very unusual and special about what this might mean on a larger scale??? Talk to any her-2 friends you know and encourage them to post their types here. I would love to find a negative B blooded person with her-2, if one exists anywhere out there??? Also, FYI, type A blood, in general, whether negative or positive, is most frequently associated with cancer of all types for all kinds of folks...Best Regards and thanks again to all who posted. Gina
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