Sickle Cell Disease Sickle Cell Disease is an inherited blood disease which can cause pain, damage to vital organs, and in some cases, death in childhood or early adulthood. This disease affects a protein inside the red blood cells called hemoglobin. It occurs wherein a person inherits two sickle cell genes or a combination of one sickle cell gene plus any one of several other abnormal hemoglobin genes that affect the red blood cells. Hemoglobin in the red blood cells carries oxygen from the lungs and it takes it to every part of the body. A change in the oxygen-carrying hemoglobin inside red blood cells ca