Bluesbrother: There were some important points deliberately ignored by my dub associate , though :
1) this happened decades ago. A solution was quickly found and the problem should have been minimised . The scandal is the slowness of remedial action and the cover-up.
2) The subjects of the programme had received Factor Eight for Haemophilia . This serum was allowed by the WTS at the time (as a conscience matter) and ,of course still is today.
3) The current version of the Advance Medical Document ,the "Blood Card", does not even allow for the total abstainer. It just states that as a J W you refuse blood, and the main four components . No choices , just sign it and give The Secretary a copy....
So this means that if such a risk should still occur again, Jehovah's Witnesses are just as much in danger as anybody else. Watchtower policy does not protect them. Yet still I hear the statements from individuals about how much they are protected by being "in the Truth".
What is the matter ?Are they blinkered?
Yes, they are blinkered. Or, more likely - blindfolded.
The WT has put a quasi scientific spin on their so-called religious doctrine on blood for so long now that even the legal and 'outside' medical community has been blinkered. And blindsided.
The so-called blood doctrine has changed and evolved in exactly the same ways that the bloodless industry (now evolved into "patient blood management") has demanded it to change. The parameters of the blood doctrine match, not the Bible from which the WT claims it comes from, but, rather, the parameters of Patient Blood Management. With one crucial difference. The JW patient cannot have that life-saving transfusion if they bleed out uncontrollably.
I wish I could find the source and quote of what I am about to say - but it is alluding me at the moment. The one single industry that profited the most from the HIV/AIDS blood scandal was the bloodless industry (I know I have the source for this somewhere...). That is the industry that made the most money from contaminated blood.
And where the seed money for that industry come from? Well...I think we all know the answer to that. For those of you who don't, this is a quote from Scott Carney's The Red Market (pg 235):
...certain religious groups - most notably Jehovah's Witnesses - were opposed to any sort of blood transfusion. Over the years the complete lack of demand among these people led to private investment and eventually to great strides forward in the field of bloodless surgeries. At first doctors wasted blood in order to gain more surgical sophistication; however, when they could not extend the benefits of routine procedures to everyone, the prohibition of blood use created a boom in technologies that reduced blood loss across the board.
Private investment? Of course - wealthy and speculative Jehovah's Witnesses. Profiting off the blood ban. Profiting from the HIV/AIDS tainted blood scandal. Someone somewhere made a LOT of money from investing in the bloodless industry. And I bet that whoever they were/are, make large donations to the WTS. (California investment in the "pioneer" of bloodless surgery - hospitals and insurance programs - owned by JWs...etc, etc)
And about that "boom in technologies". The technology that the so-called bloodless industry relies on would not exist if not for blood transfusion technology. The entire bloodless industry is built on the back of existing blood technology - without blood transfusions, there would be no bloodless surgery.
So, how does that fit into the notion that Jehovah doesn't want people to share blood? Did he just sit up there watching all those poor misguided people having blood transfusions and then said..."Oh look! That blood transfusion technology - that thing I told my people not to do - is something that people can use now to avoid blood sharing! Yay! My JWs are so smart - they can now show the world how smart they have been all along!" (and just think of the profits that can be donated to Jehovah).
