Elder said people "rarely" die from refusing a blood transfusion

by InterestedOne 48 Replies latest watchtower medical

• 

  InterestedOne

  I sat in on the "Know Your Options" reading tonight, and the elder said a couple things I was wondering about:

  1. He said if a doctor says you have a high risk of dying if you refuse a blood transfusion, he is misleading you. He said people "rarely" die from refusing a blood transfusion. Is there a statistic to confirm or refute that statement? Or, could the number of people that actually refuse blood transfusions be too low to get a good statistic Within the set of people who refuse blood transfusions, what is the percentage of them who die from their refusal?

  2. The elder asked the congregation what are some things that "usually" happen when you take a blood transfusion. People responded with things such as hepatitis, infection, or your body rejecting the blood, and he approved of their responses. Do these complications happen frequently enough to say they "usually" happen?

  I guessing #2 is probably the more inaccurate of his two statements, so I'm mainly interested in #1.
• 

  heathen

  I remember the big aids scare but believe you can suffer after a blood transfusion. I heard the WTBTS made it a conscience issue anyway. THey will never change it since there would be wrongful death law suits against them if they did. It's all about protecting jehovahs nest egg these days.
• 

  Bungi Bill

  He would be making claim No.1 without any statistical evidence to back it up;

  - just repeating the WTS official line about his matter.

  I read everything that they printed / listened to everything that they uttered for 28 years, and never once saw any creditable statistics presented to back up that statement.

  Maintaining that a blood transfusion is "unlikely to save your life" is just one more example of a long line of JW psuedo-science.

  Bill.
• 

  garyneal

  Many topics started here with links to articles saying otherwise should be enough to give anyone pause.

  Did the elder also (conveniently) forget the May 1994 Awake article?

  
• 

  TD

  He said if a doctor says you have a high risk of dying if you refuse a blood transfusion, he is misleading you. He said people "rarely" die from refusing a blood transfusion. Is there a statistic to confirm or refute that statement? Or, could the number of people that actually refuse blood transfusions be too low to get a good statistic Within the set of people who refuse blood transfusions, what is the percentage of them who die from their refusal?

  Doctors are right far more often than they are wrong when they say a transfusion is absolutely medically necessary. In a British study of surgical patients who were Jehovah's Witnesses, more than 60% of those patients whose preoperative hemoglobin had fallen below 6 g/dL died following the surgery. More than 30% of those below 7g/dL died. (Commonly considered to be the transfusion threshold in low risk patients.) (Severity of anaemia and operative mortality and morbidity. The Lancet 1988 Apr 2;1(8588):727-9)

  Multiple studies of maternal deaths have shown that mortality is many times higher among Jehovahs Witnesses than among the general population. A study by Dr. Carl J. Saphier at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York indicates a death rate of 521 deaths per 100,000 live births which is a nearly 44 times higher than among the general US population.(American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 2001;185:893-895) A similar study in Great Britain showed an even higher death rate among Jehovahs Witnesses: 1 per 1000 versus 1 per 100,000. (Department of Health. Report on Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths in the United Kingdom 1994-1996)
• 

  Scully

  The WTS likes to play games with semantics. We've seen that over and over again with regard to various issues.

  The game that the WTS is playing has to do with the actual COD that would be listed on a death certificate. For legal purposes, a physician cannot write a religious issue as the medical cause of death. The terminology has to fit a certain legal and medical jargon so as to avoid the appearance of "judging" someone whose constitutional rights permit them to make choices within the scope of their personal beliefs.

  So a JW refusing blood can have a COD as "hypovolemic shock" or "hypoxia secondary to traumatic injury", etc. which is technically and legally correct, but which does not point fingers at the belief system that required the patient to refuse the treatment that might have saved their life.

  Here is an example of this game in action:

  http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/38401

  When the WTS or Elders™ parrot statistics or make claims that people "rarely" die from refusing blood transfusions, it's because of this technicality, just like when they moved someone off Bethel property after they jumped out of a window in a suicide attempt, but before the person died - they could claim that nobody ever committed suicide "at" Bethel.
• 

  thetrueone

  He said if a doctor says you have a high risk of dying if you refuse a blood transfusion, he is misleading you.

  Quite the disingenuous lie, so all those millions of lives saved by using a BT during medical operations have all been a farce.

  Most elders have no or little knowledge of how useful BT are in certain medical situations.

  They're familiarized mostly with the WTS biblical doctrine on BT that the organization has established and indoctrinated into their followers.

  They may partially give out some information that supports their position but they never tell all of the encompassing truth, thats for sure.

  The implied spiritual war-fare ensues to uphold the organization as being in the right and this where their disingenuous originates.

  Case in point my mother got extermly sick a few years ago so my father took her to the Hospital for care and examination.

  After going through a long list of tests it was determined that she had contacted a blood infection, the Doctor in her care insisted

  that she needed a complete BT due to this infection in conjunction with some anti-biotics. She was gravely sick and the Doctor said

  it was serious that she could possibly die within days even though he knew she was a practicing JW and was aware of her stance on BTs.

  She refused the BT and she died 2 days latter.
• 

  InterestedOne

  OMG. Scully, I just read that "answerbag." Thank you. I had no idea.

  TD, thank you for those references to studies of JW's. I would like to see an update to the 1988 study.
• 

  Judge Dread

  It doesn't make any difference.

  Did you all forget that THIS ISSUE IS NOT A MEDICAL ISSUE!

  It is based on the interpretation of Acts 15:29.

  JDW
• 

  thetrueone

  There is a probable variance of patients who did receive a BT and died anyway due to other complications, there is no denying that.

  But there is also a probable variance of patients that did save their life by having one, higher than not to be sure.

  There are situations such as massive traumatic injury with high amount of blood loss, that most definitely would save a person's life.

  If a person is suffering from liver failure and they are waiting for a transplant, this another case when doctors give BTs.

  These are just a few examples, there are many more and you will certainly not hear from a JW about them of course.

  Doctors today know of the complications that could arise from giving a BT so they are used and given if its only in the best

  interest of their patient's health.