Question: In what cases is a transfusion of whole blood or the 4 wt prohibited components the only lifesaving solution?

by Daniel1555 15 Replies latest watchtower medical

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  Daniel1555

  Dear friends,

  My mother in law said, that bloodless medicine works in all situations.

  I don't have a lot of medical experience. Could you tell me, in which situations a transfusion of whole blood, red cells, white cells, platelets or plasma is absolutely necessary to save the life? (I guess massive bloodloss, leukaemia and much more)

  Are there some quotes from the wt society that they admit, that sometimes a blood transfusion would be absolutely to save the life?

  Thank you so much for your answer.
• 

  DeWandelaar

  Some Leucemia treatments can only happen when using blood...
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  Narcissistic Supply

  If you have ever been bitten by a misquito in a crowded room; you have had a blood transfusion. sorry about that.
• 

  nonjwspouse

  Check out the research done by birdwoman2 on the yuku.com exjw group. It is in depth.

  All of those forbidden combonents can be recieved in fractional form. So in reality the fractions all put back togethers adding the 98% or so water, is whole blood. It is asinine. The "sacred life giving blood" is put through massive processes, then fractioned out. Hundereds of people are needed to make up some of the tiny fractions. Hundreds give, but the JW take and don't give back. Giving blood does not kill the donor and it saves lives. Jesus saved lives and ignored rules that supposedly prohibited such actions on certian times.

  In an emergency or massive blood loss situation people need whole blood. In cancer paitents they need plasma. Just as you posted. In transplants, the organs have the very fractions naturally insided them that are on the not allowed list. Mother's milk has large amounts of white blood cells ( Which are not allowed on the blood list. Interestingly this is actually eaten..... think about it.)
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  Scully

  Whole blood is almost never used, except in the case of autologous transfusion. Your own blood is stored and reinfused when required when you have surgery.

  Packed red blood cells are transfused in cases of severe anemia and in life threatening situations of extreme blood loss, like a car accident or gun shot.

  Platelets and red blood cells are used in cases of DIC (disseminated intravascular coagulation), where a person literally "bleeds out" - I've known of cases where a person's entire blood volume had to be replaced several times over to save their lives (50+ units). Non-blood treatment almost never works with DIC.
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  Daniel1555

  Nonjwspouse: thank you for your explanations. I know the reasons why blood transfusions are not against bible scripture. I know the unlogic things of the blood doctrin and I believe that this put a lot of bloodguilt on the organisation. I am waiting for a good moment to talk about it to my very zealous wife and to inform her about my conscience decision that I would allow blood in a life threatening situation, especially also for our baby boy. I just recently had this discussion with my mother in law who said I should show her a situation where the wt society admits that only blood would have saved the life.

  Scully: Thanks so much for your answer. I think that there might be situations during birth or c-section where a transfusion is absolutely lifesaving (as there are a lot of sisters who died during childbirth (at least some cases in the media).
• 

  rawe

  Hi Daniel1555,

  "My mother in law said, that bloodless medicine works in all situations."

  Twice in my life I faced the issue of blood transfusions and both times refused. The first time was in Canada in the 1980s when I was in the hospital for a bleeding ulcer. My blood count dropped to 5.0. Since then I have moved to the USA. However while on vacation in 2001 in Canada I fell out of tree and seriously injured myself. The doctors in Prince George, BC, performed emergency surgery to remove my spleen and did so without blood.

  Thus, I had a fairly positive view of my Witness-inspired view of blood and medicine. In fact, even after leaving the faith, I continued to carry my medical directive (no blood) card for about a year.

  Eventually, a couple things started to make me think about this issue more deeply. One was my wife's refusal of an epidural blood patch as an option is something should go wrong during the birth of our last daughter. My wife refused believing that once blood had left the bood it should not be returned. Only later on did we realize that epidural blood patch had been designated as acceptable by the faith. Perhaps even more shocking was plasmapheresis had also in recent years been given the green light -- even though blood completely leaves the body.

  In Canada I was very aware of the tainted blood scandal, wherein Canada was slow to start testing for HIV. You can bet that made me pretty glad to have avoided that first transfusion. If you Google Horace Krever you can read about this.

  Eventually, though I asked myself this question: What expertise do I have on this issue? Frankly most things I knew about the issue had come from Watchtower publications.

  My conclusion was this: I am not a medical expert, so really I have no basis to really comment on how effective blood or blood components might be in any given situation. In general though I know thousands upon thousands of procedures involving blood products are done every day. In one case I did write to the University for the source of a Awake! quote that was negative about blood. The provocative title of news article Awake quote was "Banked Blood Could Do More Harm Than Good." When I followed up the source, it was very clear the researchers involved were tackling the issue of how blood is stored after collection and how that can be improved. At the very top of the article it cited references to the effectiveness of blood transfusions. In any regards, why would these researchers even be trying to find a more effective way to store blood, if blood transfusions did "harm" -- the impression Awake! left with its readers.

  Finally, I must say, I was impressed with Greg Stafford (Christian Witnesses of Jah & Elihu Books) letter to the Governing Body on the subject of how blood is presented in the Bible. I'm an atheist and don't agree with Greg's religious views in general, but I do credit him for helping me see it is more consistent to see blood in the Bible as sacred and life-sustaining and therefore should not be consumed as food. Indeed medical use of blood, does not involve consuming it as food.

  Cheers,

  -Randy
• 

  nonjwspouse

  Also, you can google what part of the blood supply is most responsible for HIV infections, and that part is on the "accepted" list
• 

  TD

  Bloodless medicine works through blood conservation. When blood loss is properly managed, the patient never gets to the point where doctors feel that a transfusion is necessary. But blood loss cannot always be managed.

  Real life example:

  A young woman here collapsed a few years ago with a ruptured fallopian tube. She had ignored the pain of an ectopic pregnancy.

  By the time emergency services had arrived she had bled out. The resuscitation and emergency surgery took 40+ units of platelets, red cells and plasma, which is several times the blood volume of a human being.

  You don't need any special medical training to realize that a simple plasma expander would not be enough in situations like this. Plasma expanders prevent vascular collapse, but they do not carry oxygen. You can't have every drop of blood in your body drained out and replaced with one.

  There have also been a number of articles in medical journals in the last few years about whole blood transfusions making a comeback. Improved screening and matching techniques have made it viable in military surgical hospitals. Again, we're dealing with massive blood loss from gunshot wounds and other battlefield trauma. Historically, medical treatments developed for the military eventually find their way into civilian life.
• 

  TD

  As DeWandelaar mentioned above, the treatment of leukemia may involve transfusion. Chemotherapy intense enough to achieve remission can bring the production of red cells and platelets to a screaming halt. Red Cells and platelets don't last forever and have to be replaced. If your own body can't do it, then transfusion is the only answer.

  In 2002, an article actually appeared in The Oncologist entitled, “Faith, Identity and Leukemia: When Blood Products are Not an Option.” The article was aimed at helping medical professionals deal with the feelings of guilt, frustration and anger associated with the routine loss of Witness leukemia patients while still respecting their wishes.

  For the deadliest forms of leukemia, a bone marrow transplant is often the last resort. This procedure is gruesome and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but at the same time, a diagnosis of aplastic anemia, lymphoma or Hodgkins’s disease used to be a death sentence. Now thousands of lives are saved every year

  If your MIL is over 40 and didn't grow up in a lead mine, she probably remembers the case of Anissa Ayala. Ms. Ayala was a teenaged girl who was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in the late 1980's. She needed a bone marrow transplant and none of her closest relatives could provide a match. National registies like we have today did not yet exist. Her parents decided to conceive another child on the wild chance that a match could be found. Below are the two girls as they appeared on the cover of the June 17, 1991 issue of Time:

  

  Since there is a period of weeks or months when the recipient of a bone marrow transplant is not producing red cells or platelets on their own, (Their own diseased bone marrow is destroyed by chemo/radiation prior to the transplant.) transfusion is an integral part of the procedure.

  Below is a fairly recent picture of Anissa and Marissa Eve:

  

  As long as Jehovah's Witnesses prefer to wallow in their ignorance, you're never going to read a story like this about a Witness. If Anissa had been a Witness, she might have achieved notierity of a different sort though. ---She could have appeared posthumously on the cover of Awake!