[Ichneumon]

Shroudie, if they can type the blood, why can't they carbon date it?

It hasn't even been firmly determined that there *is* any blood on the shroud. Some tests appear to rule out the existence of actual blood, some (mostly by Heller and Adler) appear to indicate that there is blood -- but other researchers have had trouble reproducing Heller and Adler's tests even using the same methdologies.

PCR testing has amplified human DNA from the shroud (and the DNA seems to indicate an AB blood type), but there's no way to determine that the DNA traces were actually from any alleged blood on the shroud, since so many people have handled the shroud through the centuries that the source of the DNA could well have been anyone's fingerprints, hair, skin flakes, etc. which happen to have been on the surface of the shroud.

As with so many other studies of the shroud, the results are more muddled and much less conclusive than its proponents would like to admit.

[shroudie]

Actually, that is not quite true what you say.

There is real human blood. The bloodstains are real human blood, type AB. There is no question about that. Numerous scientists including Paul Heller, who was Professor of Internal Medicine and Medical Physics at Yale University and the Director of the New England Institute; Alan D. Adler, who was Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Western Connecticut University; Victor V. Tyron, Director of the Center for Advanced DNA Technology at the University of Texas Health Science Center and others conducted an entire repertoire of tests. Immunological, fluorescence and spectrographic tests, as well as Rh and ABO typing of blood antigens prove it is real human blood beyond any doubt. Raymond Rogers and Anna Arnoldi of the Department of Molecular Sciences at the University of Milan concur.

Highly reputed forensic medicine experts concur. Fred Zugibe, Adjunct Associate Professor of Pathology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons and once Chief Medical Examiner, Rockland County, New York; James Malcolm Cameron, Professor of Forensic Medicine at the London Hospital Medical School Professor James Malcolm Cameron and Robert Bucklin, Forensic Pathologist, once Head of the Forensic Medical Division of the Los Angeles Medical Examiner Office and Coroner of Las Vegas support the conclusion. They all conclude that the stains were formed by real human bleeding from real wounds on a real human body, in rigor mortis, that came into direct contact with the cloth. Many of the stains have the distinctive forensic signature of clotting with red corpuscles about the edge of the clot and a clear yellowish halo of serum.

Shroudie