NO BENEFITS TO BLOOD TRANSFUSION...?

by Gill 61 Replies latest watchtower medical

• 

  Terry

  The problem with Blood Transfusion is the problem with anything else you take into your body: quality control.

  You can get very sick from a salad bar with lax hygienic oversight.

  Competency is competency from medical treatment to driving a car on the freeway.

  Secondly, a medical emergency creates a level of stress on any person involved. But, Jehovah's Witnessess have an added layer of anxiety unnecessarily burdening them at such a time: they are in the grip of a terrifying fear of being expunged by their God if they violate the Watchtower policy.

  I've gone into great detail before about the Watchtower policy itself. It is a blatant and deliberate publicity stunt which takes the rather simple prohibitions of the Laws of Noah for Gentiles on murder (abstain from blood=do not murder) in order to paint Jehovah's Witnesses as Super Christian Martyrs. We can thank the contrarian tastes of Judge Rutherford and the macheivellian mind of Fred Franz for the resulting doctrine.

  The ethical question is simple, but, not simple-minded.

  Life only has value when it has purpose

  For ordinary humans self-preservation is the beginning of all other values.

  A dead person cannot worship a living god.

  When death becomes a valuable purpose it exposes a core insanity.

  The (Watchtower) blood policy turns this on its head. Abstaining from blood was life affirming to Christians and Jews in the 1st Century because it was a call for preserving human life by not shedding blood in murder. The Watchtower has diabolically reversed this into a death affirming policy by making martyrdom more important than a living worshipper.

  The actual "respect for Jehovah" blood issue was contained in the prohibition on "Keep yourselves free from things strangled..." because the blood was not poured out.

  Ask yourself a simple question.

  Why would Christians not be warned about murder if it weren't contained in "abstain from blood" (corresponding to the Noahide Laws)?

  The Watchtower Blood issue is a huge neon sign blinking on and off over a pawn shop where people offer their lives and the lives of their love ones for a cheap pawn ticket that buys them a martyrs death for no other reason than that they've been lied too about what is really valuable. Life is the greatest value; not approval from a book publishing company in Brooklyn!
• 

  superhooper

  post to SCULLY

  apologising for lack of knowledge on EPO

  elective surgery used drug. i see.

  however and i see your point. very diplomatic i may say. but the cons to taking blood are as i see it are greater. its becoming more dangerous. and i suppose i see everyday these new equipment and new stratagies that save lives and have better long term effects on the patient.

  my argument is mainly at people who attack witnesses who say in decent comments on child killers.

  im a very hot headed person and get livid when people are attacked unfairly.

  apologising again and to that other clever chap. good point made i suppose.

  S.H
• 

  TD

  Superhooper, By treating transfusion medicine as purely a risk vs. benefit medical issue, you cut to the very heart of the problem for JW's Every member of the JW faith should be allowed to make the same decision in the same manner. Unfortunately, they have been told that the Bible has something to say on the issue, when it most decidedly does not. There was a time when the JW organization forbade IgG (Gamma globulin) Today, JW's don't even think twice about accepting this component. It's part of most post-exposure vaccines. If you were a JW parent that lost a child remaining faithful to this past position and then over time, the organization changed their mind and subsequently pretended that the new position was what they had taught all along, would you be just a teeny bit upset?
• 

  superhooper

  yes you jedi master. clever chap
• 

  LDH

  its becoming more dangerous.

  Again,

  PLEASE cite your sources.

  The JWs constantly begin articles with "It has been said," without ever saying exactly WHERE it has been said. If you are going to make an accusation you will be pushed to provide your sources on this forum. Anything else is heresay and fear mongering.
• 

  Gill

  However, in the final analysis, if the WTBTS wants to stick to its 'The Bible says No Blood' stance, what is its reasoning on pushing so much information on blood fractions on its followers?

  There are obvious benefits, as medical tools to blood fractions....but it all comes from BLOOD.

  The 'we can take this' and 'we can't take that' particular fraction, has turned the whole issue into the obvious nonsense that it has now.
• 

  TD

  The 'we can take this' and 'we can't take that' particular fraction, has turned the whole issue into the obvious nonsense that it has now.

  You're right of course, but pragmatically speaking I don't think the JW's leaders and policy makers have much choice. I doubt if many people realize just how much of modern medicine the JWs would have to refuse if they categorically forbade anything and everything that contains even a minute amount of some blood component. For example, many of the common childhood immunizations contain small amounts of either human or animal albumin both in the injection itself as well as in the growth medium needed to culture the virus.

  Another thing to consider is the public spectacle it would make. For example when was the last time any of us saw a human being stricken with rabies? Even after exposure, this disease is so easily preventable that actual infection in human beings is something that pretty much exists only in history books.

  A similar situation exists with tetanus. If you step on a rusty nail and it's been more than a few years since your last immunization, you'll be given an injection containing TIG - Tetanus Immune Globulin. Even a JW would not think twice about this despite the fact that this is a blood component. As with rabies, the alternative is too horrible to think about.
• 

  Scully

  TD:

  A similar situation exists with tetanus. If you step on a rusty nail and it's been more than a few years since your last immunization, you'll be given an injection containing TIG - Tetanus Immune Globulin. Even a JW would not think twice about this despite the fact that this is a blood component. As with rabies, the alternative is too horrible to think about.

  Actually, I used to know a JW family who refused the TIG injection for their daughter in the early 90s (after the WTS published that it was a Conscience Matter™ whether or not to accept "blood fractions" like immune globulins). They still believed it was "wrong" to accept it because it was technically "blood".
• 

  jayhawk1

  (I'm only posting to this so I can find it later.)
• 

  TD

  Scully,

  Actually, I used to know a JW family who refused the TIG injection for their daughter in the early 90s

  Wow....I hope the child was O.K.(?)

  There was a "wobble" in the Watchtowers from about 1961 to 1963, but most gamma globulin based preparations were made a "conscience matter" clear back in 1958.