Quack science and the risks of blood transfusions

THE WATCHTOWER SOCIETY HAS NOT been content with giving "Biblical" reasons for prohibiting blood transfusions. Articles and publications dealing with this question are just as concerned with emphasizing the dangers of blood transfusions and the advantages of some alternatives to blood transfusions. Playing to the JW community, the Watchtower and Awake! magazines are filled with horror stories and snide remarks emphasizing the danger. Most JWs, when dealing with the issue, will say much about Hepatitis and AIDS and the horrible dangers of blood transfusions. Despite having no expertise in medicine they will also insist that there are always alternatives to blood transfusions. This is because of the heavy propaganda from the WTS:

"It is not surprising that transfusing such a complex substance might, as one surgeon put it, "confuse" the body's immune system. In fact, a blood transfusion can suppress immunity for as long as a year. To some, this is the most threatening aspect of transfusions.

Then there are infectious diseases as well. They have exotic names, such as Chagas disease and cytomegalovirus. Effects range from fever and chills to death. Dr. Joseph Feldschuh of the Cornell University of Medicine says that there is 1 chance in 10 of getting some sort of infection from a transfusion. It is like playing Russian roulette with a ten-chamber revolver. Recent studies have also shown that blood transfusions during cancer surgery may actually increase the risk of recurrence of the cancer.

No wonder a television news program claimed that a blood transfusion could be the biggest obstacle to recovery from surgery. Hepatitis infects hundreds of thousands and kills many more transfusion recipients than AIDS does, but it gets little of the publicity. No one knows the extent of the deaths, but economist Ross Eckert says that it may be the equivalent of a DC-10 airliner full of people crashing every month." (Awake! Oct. 22, 1990, p. 9)

Those who have read this document so far will be aware of the fact that the WTS has used similar -- and stronger -- arguments against vaccination programmes and organ transplants, not to mention medical science in general. While there are negative side effects of vaccinations, informed persons agree that on the whole they have been of tremendous benefit to humanity. Even though some individuals have died, vaccinations have saved millions of lives. One would be hard pressed to find anyone -- JW or not -- who would not agree that vaccinations have been a good thing.

We will later return to these exaggerated horror stories about blood transfusions. For now let it suffice to point to the similarities between the threats used against those who accepted vaccinations, organ transplants and now blood transfusions.

The WTS has not been content just to exaggerate real threats. In line with claims about alleged personality changes as a result of vaccinations and organ transplants, it appealed to the same sort of quack scientists:

"Criminals in jail are given the opportunity to donate their blood. For example, the New York Times of April 6, 1961, reported: "Inmates of Sing Sing Prison at Ossining will give blood to the Red Cross today." A commendable act? Perhaps not as beneficial to their fellow men as the community is led to believe. . . . in his book WhoIsYourDoctorandWhy? Doctor Alonzo Jay Shadman says: "The blood in any person is in reality the person himself. It contains all the peculiarities of the individual from whence it comes. This includes hereditary taints, disease susceptibilities, poisons due to personal living, eating and drinking habits. . . . The poisons that produce the impulse to commit suicide, murder, or steal are in the blood." And Dr. Amrico Valrio, Brazilian doctor and surgeon for over forty years, agrees. "Moral insanity, sexual perversions, repression, inferiority complexes, petty crimes -- these often follow in the wake of blood transfusion," he says. Yet it is acknowledged in the public press that organizations whose blood supply is considered reliable obtain blood for transfusion from criminals who are known to have such characteristics." (The Watchtower, Sept. 15, 1961, p. 564)

So according to the WTS a blood transfusion can give you a criminal's personality! We ask what is the more astonishing: that the WTS actually taught this nonsense or that it was able to dig up "experts" who agreed with them? We know for certain that this quackery was believed by many JWs well into the 1980s, and probably still is.

It is interesting to note how much in recent years the WTS has changed its general ideas about science, and medical science in particular. While it once considered the medical profession to be demon-possessed, it is now more likely to print articles in Awake! magazine about the wonders of surgery and medicine, and it often warns against certain alternative treatments that are not backed by scientific evidence.

Considering that the JW community has historically been hostile to medical professionals (and this hostility has of course been fed by the controversies related to the blood prohibition!) and positive to "alternative medicine," (some of those "experts" quoted to support the anti-vaccination stand were homeopaths) it will be interesting to see how quickly this reversal will change the attitude of the rank and file.

Despite the fact that the WTS has gone to great lengths to minimize damage to the JW community by allowing more and more blood components to be used in treatment, the blood prohibition is a major cause of the strained relationship between Jehovahs Witnesses and medical professionals, and is a major reason the JWs are considered a dangerous religious group.

Also, despite all JW arguments about "alternatives," their blood ban kills.

Next Section: Blood and the Bible

Thanks zenpunk

The following chapters mostly deal with the "Biblical" arguments, pretty much in depth, and then it returns to a longer dissection of the JW Blood brochure to investigate JW propaganda techniques.

In anyone missed it, part 04 is here: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=33450&page=1&site=3

- Jan.

(bold mine)

So, would the OPPOSITE also be true?

For instance, if the blood of a "good law-abiding"  individual was transfused into a criminal, would that person also have a change in personality and suddenly become a model citizen?

Keep them coming, Jan.

Andee

Hi JanH,

thanks for writing and posting these articles.  I really enjoy your refutation of such simplistic, tho clever, propaganda the WTS spews. 

One question tho.  You said:

Will that be in a later article? 

Pat

Patio,

Will that be in a later article? 

It is in the series yes. I have to do some reediting to post the web pages on this board, but I will post them all to give a little food in between the fluff here 

WT,

LOL. Well, firstly, I wrote most of it quite some time ago.

Secondly, well I think heavy drinking is good for the intellect. You know when predators attack a flock of animals, they take the weakest individual. So, this makes the flock as a whole stronger and fitter. It's the same with how alcohol affects the brain cells

- Jan