Are people with Rhesus negative blood type descendants of aliens? No, that's not true: Rhesus negative blood appears in about 7 percent of the entire global population.
The story appeared in a TikTok video (archived here) by @verteneverte on July 1, 2023, under the title (translated into English by Lead Stories staff) "Are humans descended from aliens? Let's look at it." It opened:
They often have supernatural abilities such as telepathy, prophetic dreams, and the ability to influence electrical devices - for example, turning off a street lamp when they pass around it.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Jul 27 08:01:14 2023 UTC)
The claim came from various conspiracy websites. The conspiracy theory is based on a misunderstanding of blood types, antigens and antibodies.
Rhesus negative is most often found in the European population, especially in the Basques, the inhabitants of northeastern Spain. Because people don't currently know the evolutionary history of the Rh blood group system, this has provoked some conspiracy theories, such a the "Aliens of the Gaps" argument, which is a variation of the "God of the Gaps" argument. It is used by creationists who attribute a phenomenon to a deity if there is no agreed explanation for it.
Other explanations are based on mutating naturally. There are approximately 32 blood types in humans. The most important and well-known are the AB0 and Rh systems. The Rh system categorizes blood according to whether or not a person's blood contains a certain Rh antigen, also called the Rh factor. Rh antigens are found on the cell membrane of red blood cells. The labels Rh positive and Rh negative are used exclusively for antigen D. People who lack the D antigen simply don't have the gene that can produce the D antigen.
