by nicolaou 739 Replies latest watchtower medical
All maths and extrapolations and assumptions aside, the implications of the 50k and 250k number don't make sense.
Marvins 'conservative' 50k implies 30 JW's a year bleeding to death in UK hospitals - 250k implies...well you can do the maths.
If any lurkers or faders have HLC access and can get a figure that would be informative. Feel free to PM me and I will post it if you prefer not to.
Jerry Bergman has published in various academic journals, so the barrier to entry can't be that high.
All these extrapolations from a small and ambiguous set of data remind me of the similar controversy surrounding the Spencer article and mental health among JWs. That one was based on information from Australia. Is it an antipodean speciality to produce tantalising but problematic data on interesting JW subjects?
well at least his methodolgy is open to professional peer review - I think that is what we are attempting here with Marvin, but very unprofessionally :-)
seriously SBF - what is your gut feel on JW deaths in the UK per annum due to blood refusal?
I was amazed that Economist blogger had to go back 6 years to 2007 to quote an example.
I have absolutely no idea. I suspect it's well below 1% of JW deaths anyway, just because I've never heard of it happening personally.
I also suspect a very large minority of JWs accept blood when it comes to the crunch, especially in cases where it is most necessary, which would obviously affect the figures. In fact I can add my own anecdote to that. I know a sister whose non-JW husband had an operation, and together they asked the doctor to avoid blood if he possibly could, but give it to him if his life depended on it. To the sister's horror the doctor said actually many JWs made the same request, but asked for it to be kept confidential. This is a very hardline sister, and she was angry that some JWs were prepared to take blood secretly. She actually went to the elders and asked if they could investigate which brothers had made this arrangement. Crazy cow.
between my wife and I - combined 70 years active association with a huge circle of JW's in several UK regions - we came up with a big fat zero JW's we were aware of that wilfully bled out in the hospital.
Just the 3 that made the news in the last 5 or 6 years - Joshua McAuley the young lad in Birmingham area, the twins mum Emma Gough and the old dear Margaret Cornelius - the latter being local press only.
Marvins numbers implies that for every JW death that makes the national and local news there are another 30 or so deaths that go unreported....
Mary certainly makes the point. " In my brother in law's case, refusing a blood transfusion was not listed as the reason he died, even though it was directly responsible for his demise."
That was the same situation with a close relative of mind.
That would have been the same situation with me when I had open heart surgery in 1987. Without the blood I would not have made it through according to my surgeon.Though my death certification would not have listed 'lack of blood transfusion' as the cause of death.
There are but three facts to keep in mind which a number of you have obfuscated by persisting in playing ping pong with the statistics that Marvin presented from one small study.
Fact one: The WTBTS has a long history of presenting their dogma over and above the medical community. The WT is a printing company anything they have to say about medical practices is worthless in comparison to the body of evidence that the medical community has amassed. Dating back to their opposition to vaccines, blood and transplants the WT persists in placing Dogma over common sense. They are and have been medically ignorant and many have died because of that......that is a fact.
Fact two: In extreme trauma cases nothing takes the place of blood we don't have to debate that. It's a given based on the amount of time it takes a person to bleed out. On the other hand we do have statistics on the percentage of people saved because they got enough blood quickly. Certainly in this and other countries there is more then enough data that can prove that.
Fact three: and Terry spoke to this next point.........Jehovah's Witness parents have a moral obligation to keep their families safe. By common consent, by the law of the land, in any court room.......... allowing your child to die for want of a simple medical procedure is a crime. It's not a freedom of religion issue it is first and all murder.
What the people in Jonestown did was to conspire to murder their families and then participating in that murder. What believing JW's do when they withhold blood from their children is also murder. Maybe it's murder by ignorance, maybe it's reckless behavior but when everything is said and done they conspired to kill their child.
Now go back and rag on .26 or .01 as if that shit matter's.
@giordano - you make some excellent off-topic points - pls see the subject line for details of this particular thread.
developed a migraine over the last few days so have been unable to participate.
After all this discussion I think we have learned a lot - there are problems with Marvin's figures and his extrapolations. But on the other hand the issue of Jehovahs witnesses dying because of refusing blood needs to be publicised. I personally know of one person who did die because of refusing blood and know of several people who have died of cancer. In some cancers, like lukaemia for example, anaemia is a complicating feature and Jehovahs witnesses who develop lukaemia are at risk (I don't know if anaemia complicates other cancers). I also know of a distant friend who is facing this issue (because of lukaemia) at the moment. I don't know what she will choose. Another thing is that the JW population is aging therefore refusing blood will more and more be seen more as a complicating factor rather than as a direct factor. So this will hamper trying to extrapolate figures too.
Marivn's problems can be overcome if he was to use such phrases as "it is not clear but present research may indicate that.... " and perhaps in his extrapolations even mention some of the pitfalls associated with making generalisation but pressing on nevertheless. In other words don't present your research as fact but perhaps as facts in the making. After all we have done research, we have personal experience, some of us like Marvin and Lee Elder the author of AJWBR have published their work on the interent and their and other sites like theirs (including JWN) can be mined for valuable info so long as we express a little caution and so long this comes across when we want to raise awareness.
Thank you Besty. I left the JW's because it was a waste of time limiting oneself to other people's dogma. Does it matter if 50,000 people died or 250,000 for want of blood?
What matters to me and a fair number of readers is not who's statisics are correct but how many are dying.
Carry on dude we all 'love' these moronic ego driven ping pong games some delight in.
Does it matter if 50,000 people died or 250,000 for want of blood?
What if a more accurate number is 10,000, or 1,000?
Does it then matter that certain ex-JW's are using social media to propogate a ridiculously high number like 250,000?
That's the point of this thread - and a permanent record for future readers that an alternative viewpoint exists, including yours.
