The JW Organization’s attempts to defend their blunders are sometimes more colorful (And correspondingly less honest) than the blunders themselves.
One such example, and today’s JW science quote of the day, appeared in the September 15, 1961 issue of The Watchtower on page 558:
"It is of no consequence that the blood is taken into the body through the veins instead of the mouth. Nor does the claim by some that it is not the same as intravenous feeding carry weight. The fact is that it nourishes or sustains the life of the body. In harmony with this is a statement in the book Hemorrhage and Transfusion, by George W. Crile, A.M., M.D., who quotes a letter from Denys, French physician and early researcher in the field of transfusions. It says: "In performing transfusion it is nothing else than nourishing by a shorter road than ordinary—that is to say, placing in the veins blood all made in place of taking food which only turns to blood after several changes.""
Judging from the language, it appears the notion that blood transfusions were the same as intravenous feeding may at this point have been questioned from within the JW community itself. Regardless of the source of the challenge, the JW organization’s answer to it was to claim support from medical sources.
What the reading audience was not told, however, was that the book Hemorrhage and Transfusion: An Experimental and Clinical Research had been published in the year 1909 and was not really an authoritive medical text 52 years later. George Washington Crile had passed away 18 years previously in the year 1943.
Further, Crile was not really stating his own opinion, he was quoting Jean Baptiste Denys, a French physician that lived during the 1600’s and who had passed away in the year 1704. What follows is the complete quote from the original book as it appears in Chapter VII "A Brief History Of Transfusion."
"In the same year Denys of Montpellier, wrote concerning experiments which he performed on animals. He followed Lower's method in a general way except that he did not withdraw enough blood from the donor to cause death. He also tried transfusion from three calves to three dogs with success in each case. In a letter to M. de Montmore he describes two transfusions which he made on patients. His idea was that "In practicing transfusion one can only imitate the example of nature which, in order to nourish the fetus in the uterus of the mother, makes a continuous transfusion of the blood of the mother into the body of the infant through the umbilical vein. In performing transfusion it is nothing else than nourishing by a shorter road than ordinary--that is to say, placing in the veins blood all made in place of taking food which only turns to blood after several changes." (Crile, George W. Hemorrhage and Transfusion: An Experimental and Clinical Research; pp. 153,154 New York And London D. Appleton And Company 1909)
When viewed in its proper context, it is apparent that Crile was simply providing a historical narrative of the early research in this field and had not actually agreed with the humorous level of ignorance that he had found in a 252 year old (in 1909) research paper. No surgeon in 1909 would have agreed either with Deny’s conclusion or the premises upon which he based that conclusion ---that food "only turns to blood after several changes" and that the blood of the mother was continuously transfused into the body of the infant. If this were true, as Watchtower writers well knew, it would have justified transfusion as a natural rather than a preternatural therapy.
So we are left with little choice but to conclude that Watchtower writers were not only ignorant, but dishonest as well.
Tomorrow: "The elastic population"