For only the second time in its history, the American Red Cross has declared a “national blood supply crisis,” after donations fell to a four-year summer low.

The hotter summer months conventionally trigger blood shortages because people are more likely to injure themselves while spending time outdoors.

And this summer has been particularly extreme. According to the Red Cross, extreme heat, poor air quality, and widespread foodborne illnesses have compounded into blood donations dropping precipitously, causing supply levels to plummet to a historic low.

The news comes amidst record-breaking temperatures this summer, devastating heatwaves that have killed at least 25 people in the US. Public health officials are also battling an outbreak of an explosive diarrhea-causing parasite that’s has spread to 45 states.

As a result of plummeting donations, the Red Cross, which is the largest single provider of blood products, has “less than a one-day national supply of type O positive blood.” Type O positive is the most commonly transfused blood type, and highly valued because can safely be used to treat over 80 percent of the population.

The Red Cross declared its first-ever national blood crisis in January 2022, triggered by a previous low in donor turnout due to ongoing COVID-19 surge disruptions.

“Every donation has the potential to help save lives, and we urgently need everyone who is eligible to make an appointment to give blood as soon as possible,” said Red Cross Biomedical Services president Chris Hrouda in a statement.

The risks of an extremely limited blood supply are considerable.

“There’s always the possibility, when the blood supply dips like it has, that patients won’t be able to get the blood products they need, when they need,” Red Cross spokesperson Matt Trotter told NPR affiliate KOSU.

By mid-July, the Red Cross was already ringing the alarm bells, warning that donations had fallen by about 25 percent in June.

To get back on track doesn’t require drastic action, either. The organization says that just “three more donors at each blood drive this summer can end this crisis and stabilize the blood supply.”

“One donation can help save multiple lives, so if you’ve got an hour you can spare, you can do a lot of good with it,” Trotter told KOSU. “Many people who think they are ineligible actually can donate blood.”

If you or a loved one wants to donate blood, this site run by the Red Cross can help find a blood drive nearby.

Updated to correctly identify blood types.

More on blood: Immortality-Obsessed Tech Guy Trying New Technique That Involves Removing “All Blood From Body”

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Zillionaire eccentric Bryan Johnson, fresh off of being diagnosed with an incurable disease, says he just “cloned” himself “as a newborn.” Yep, you heard that right.

The immortality influencer shared in an X update that he has a “baby” version of himself growing in a petri dish that he says will allow him to become his “own blood boy” — doesn’t he already have a son who does that for him? — and potentially even “grow organs for transplantation.”

“This may be scary to some people… a dystopian future,” Johnson wrote. “But, for others, they will see it as the inevitable future of health.”

In case this is all starting to sound like the grim sci-fi plot of a certain Michael Bay movie or Kazuo Ishiguro novel, it’s not a literal, living breathing clone. (Although by posting an infamous picture of himself edited to look like a baby, Johnson’s certainly playing into that impression.)

Instead, Johnson’s created his own pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells can self-renew and develop into any type of cell in the body, making them invaluable for repairing damaged tissue. 

Where Johnson’s claims of cloning himself as a “newborn” come in is the fact that these highly versatile stem cells normally only exist when we’re still an embryo. But in recent decades scientists have developed techniques to reprogram regular adult cells into an embryonic pluripotent state, which are called induced pluripotent stem cells.

Johnson is confident that by having his own store of stem cells on hand he can “rebuild” his body, repairing everything from damaged lungs to eyesight.

“This technology gives us a path to reverse aging,” he declares.

His optimism is admirable, but many of these stem cell applications he’s touting haven’t been proven yet. Johnson claims his baby clone will let him grow organs, for example, but scientists still haven’t developed a reliable technique for creating organs derived from someone’s own stem cells. One promising technique involves growing an organ in the body of another animal like a pig before transplanting it into a human, but these attempts have stopped when the organ was still in an embryo, and no transplantation has been attempted.

An alternative that doesn’t involve stem cells, xenotransplantation, harvests organs from a genetically modified animal pig, but has only been demonstrated in human recipients who were braindead, with the transplanted organ slowly rejected over the course of several days.

All that’s to say is that we should be skeptical about Johnson’s longevity advice, though we will certainly keep rubbernecking to see how his quixotic quest is going.

More on health: Trump Is Having a Major Problem With Diarrhea

The post Bryan Johnson Says He’s Cloned Himself “As a Newborn” to “Grow Organs for Transplantation,” Which Is a Preposterous Exaggeration appeared first on Futurism.

For over two decades, a notorious fugitive accused of horrible crimes in Rhode Island hid out in one of the places you’d most expect — the corner office of a Big Pharma company.

Reported by Stat News, a 70-year old chief medical officer at the California-based firm Immix Biopharma was found to be afugitive sex predator who disappeared during his 2005 trial. Though he went by Richard Graydon in the more than twenty years since, his real name turns out to be Ronald Fischer — an anesthesiologist accused of raping numerous women on his various yachts (yes, plural).

“Although I believe my trial has gone very well and expect to be acquitted and dismissed, the small chance of losing could carry extremely and unacceptably harsh penalties,” Fischer told his lawyer via email before fleeing in 2005. “I have therefore decided not to take the risk and leave the US and enjoy life in another country where I have long been carefully planning a good, safe, secure and comfortable life.”

As it happens, Fischer never left for another country — at least not for good — but restarted his medical career in the US, leading him to rack up a number of aliases. Refusing to abandon his yachts or the medical career that paid for them, Fischer reportedly worked his way through a number of biotech companies, like Atossa Therapeutics, which appointed him interim chief medical officer in 2022.

After being hired by Immix in March of 2026, Fischer was arrested after US Marshals boarded his 56-foot vessel, The Silver Lining, as it sailed down New York’s East River. While it remains to be seen how he evaded authorities for so long, if there’s any real silver lining, it’s that this horrible fugitive is no longer lurking around the Biotech sector, or society at large.

More on crime: Innocent Man Freed After Spending Over 50 Days in Jail Due to Horribly Inaccurate AI Facial Recognition Tech

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