Blood and the Hospital Liaison Committee

by BathroomServant1 18 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  AllTimeJeff

  One more thing

  What you have to understand about any letter that the borg sends elders, be it congregation, HLC, RBC, etc, that there are seminars that put the borgs meaning into the letters.

  The letters themselves are bare bones as can be for legal reasons. But the HLC elders do at least one seminar a year to review their responsibilites and how to handle various scenarios. Handwritten notes provide another layer of legal insulation for the WTBTS.

  I know for a fact that legal liability is broached, as well as the coaching of the hospitalized JW.
• 

  cantleave

  Bathroom servant, there is no clear direction as such but there are policy documents that refer to not being disfellowshipped for taking blood. What they fail to stress is your actions will be taken as voluntary dissassociation. The legal dept use the "can't be disfellowshipped" line in court when defending human rights allegations.
• 

  moshe

  Well, I can verify that the blood issue is still a very touchy subject after my run-in with a couple JW sisters today. They are certain they have the truth, because the inner leadership circle says they have it . I asked the sisters, "will a blood transfusion save the life of a starving man?" You would have thought I was asking them an question about quantum physics. I repeated the question two more times. Finally one sister said, "no". Bingo, I had an admission that a blood transfusion was not the same as eating blood. It did no good as they immediately started in on that broken record scenario- " if a doctor said you couldn't have alcohol would it be OK to transfuse it?" No reasoning ability, which is why they are still JW's. I never even got a chance to talk about their absurd blood fractions chart.
• 

  bluecanary

  Moshe, your response should have been, "If a doctor told you to abstain from meat, would that mean you shouldn't have a liver transplant?"
• 

  Snoozy

  Bathroom servant, I found this article on Blood. It is titled :

  'Why blood Transfusions could be killing patients!.'

  http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2009/09/why_a_blood_transfusion_could_kill_you.html

  (Couldn't get link to work so just posted address)

  I too thought things would be different today regarding the safty but it doesn't look like it is.
• 

  moshe

  It has recently been published that 6 week old blood is not very effective compared to one week old blood from a blood bank. This could be part of the reason for poor transfusion results. Just like a grocery store, they want to sell the old strawberries first and hide the new shipment in the cooler- meanwhile it is getting older, too! By the time they finally throw out the old strawberries 3 days later, the new ones hidden in the cooler have seen their better days, too. The moral is you had better make sure you transfusion is from fresh stock- make sure your doctor honors your request.
• 

  Snoozy

  Well I couldn't get it to let me add a link so I had to correct the previous address for :

  "Why a blood transfusion could be killing patients."

  http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2009/09/why-a-blood-transfusion-could-kill-you.html

  Snoozy..
• 

  Snoozy

  OK..another thought on the hospital liaison committee,

  http://www.cftf.com/online/1997FALLp04-08.html

  Some interesting remarks on there from some that were still on the Liaison committees.
  One of the things that stood out to me was "If the JW's suddenly decided that is was OK to accept blood, many of the witnesses would do it. How does a conscience enter into that?

  Many don't really reject blood because they feel it is wrong according to the bible (as they are trained to say), it is usually because the WTBTS said not to take blood.
  If the WTBTS changed their belief on blood and said it was OK to take it, many would JW's would take it willingly, so much for their doing it "Because the bible says not to."

  It is likened to when the witnesses said not to take vaccinations long ago..and now it is OK...
  What about all those that died because they listened to the WTBTS..JW Witnesses?
• 

  BathroomServant1

  Thanks for the info and links everyone, I'll definitely check those out. This was just always a sore subject for me, and I'm glad I came out of "lurking mode" so I could have some sort of closure...

  Now for the rest of my issues... lol!