Open Letter Re: The Tort of Misrepresentation; Use this if you want

<div>If you want to cut and paste this and use it in your own campaign, promoting the "big news," please feel free to use it in any way you wish. I'm sharing this with as many people as possible for whom it may have some impact. I think I'm going to tweak it as an open letter to the medical community and put it in some local papers, too. Good luck everyone!

January 11, 2006

Reference: "Jehovah's Witnesses, Blood Transfusions and the Tort of Misrepresentation" by Kerry Louderback-Wood in the Journal Of Church And State, Vol. 47, Autumn 2005
Dear ______________________________________,
You may find Kerry Louderback-Wood’s article, “Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Tort of Misrepresentation” useful and important, both from a legal and medical standpoint. I have reviewed the essay, and I recommend it to all medical facilities and to their legal departments. I will be happy to share my personal copy with you, if you do not mind the distractions of my own margin notes and underlining. If you prefer to have your own copy, it can be obtained at:
Baylor University
P.O. Box 97308
Waco, TX 7698-7308.
I cannot recommend strongly enough sharing the information in this article with anyone who may be in contact with Jehovah’s Witness patients and their families. I stress this because, as the aforementioned article attests, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, (WBTS), the parent company of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, has a history of disseminating misinformation on secular matters that may deceive its relatively under-educated members, and that may influence them, especially in times of duress, to make decisions that can cause death and unnecessary suffering, especially to their children.
Additionally, as Kerry Louderback-Wood's essay demonstrates, the WBTS has suppressed information regarding its own life-saving policy changes, and has likely caused confusion, (if not unnecessary suffering and death), for its members; and it has probably created some confusion within the medical community regarding what types of treatments are acceptable to Jehovah’s Witnesses. I find this particularly reprehensible. That is why I think it would be an excellent idea for hospitals, clinics, and especially pediatricians to obtain and keep a copy of "Jehovah's Witnesses, Blood Transfusions and the Tort of Misrepresentation."
Ms. Louderback-Wood’s article documents many instances, where the WBTS has used very selective, cut-and-paste "research" to deliberately misinform its members, with whom it appears to have a fiduciary relationship. As I see it, the WBTS has established such a fiduciary relationship by:

discouraging its members from pursuing higher education, and from reading outside literature that disagrees with the WBTS agenda;

using secular information to promote its religious policies;

and establishing Hospital Liaison Committees, composed of elders from local congregations, specifically chosen to promote the cult's policies, and chosen to interface with the medical community on behalf of their cult members, who place great trust in the elders, and in the WBTS.

It therefore, follows that the WBTS, and individual elders who serve on the HLCs, have a responsibility to fully inform members of salient facts regarding the risks of refusing blood transfusions and to dispense accurate and complete information regarding the efficacy of using blood fractions. They certainly should also never omit important information regarding these issues when quoting secular sources in their literature. In my view, the WBTS ought to also openly and completely inform the medical community about changes in its blood policies. However, they have failed to act in such a fiduciary manner by instead misrepresenting secular facts, by virtue of both omission, outright mis-information, and by failure to disclose their own life-saving policy changes in a timely and public fashion.

If you or your colleagues ever must contend with an emergency or a surgery involving the Jehovah's Witness Hospital Liaison Committees or with individual Jehovah's Witnesses, I hope you will keep these facts in mind. And I hope that you will have access to the well-researched information provided in Ms. Louderback-Wood's essay.
Sincerely,
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Open Letter Re: The Tort of Misrepresentation; Use this if you want

Madame Quixote

AuldSoul

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