Blood taking...is it a disfellowshipping offence or up to conscience.

by Gill 41 Replies latest jw friends

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  phil78

  TD,

  Thank you for you last post here, showing the changing opinion of the society. I had not seen this before. When you can see the changing so clearly like this, it highlights the fact that they really don't know anything.

  -Phil
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  IP_SEC

  One of my biggest problems with the blood issue is this inferred dichotomy between whole blood and the use of so called minor fractions. Both ARE conscience matters. It is a conscience matter whether I commit adultery or not. It is a conscience matter if I where a blue shirt on the platform or not. The GB infers that minor fractions are a conscience matter, but that the conscience is not involved in the decision to take a blood transfusion. The society?s view on this is utter Bull Crap, and weakens the role of the conscience.
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  IP_SEC

  Additionally the GB has turned God?s Word into the same type of licit code as the Torah and Talmud. God?s law in the Pentateuch was: ?Do no work on the Sabbath.? The Jews built a hedge around the law with their traditions. ?If you kill a gnat on the Sabbath you are guilty of hunting, if your shoes are put together with metal nails, you are guilty of carrying a load on the Sabbath.? God condemned the legalization of his law and this is just what the FDS has done. God?s law is to abstain from blood. But the Society has illegitimated the spirit of God?s Word by making loop holes legalizing God?s Word. With legalization comes a finer control over what is considered gross sin in their eyes. Fractions, Blood transfusions, hemodilution, blah blah blah are covered by the spirit of God?s word, not just a few scriptures that infer that blood shouldn?t be used to keep us alive. The conscience in this matter has been completely demolished because now if we spin blood around in a centrifuge and fractionalize it to the point that it is no longer legally blood, well then we can?t be DFd for it. Witnesses! WAKE UP! Can you be disfellowshipped for donating blood? Yep. Where do fractions come from? Donated blood. So let me get the GB?s position here. You can?t be disfellowshipped for benefiting from the gross sin (in the eyes of the GB) of blood donations, but you can be DFd for giving the blood by which another Christian wont be DFd for using? This makes no sense what so ever. My head is freekin swimming just thinking about this. This isn?t Jehovah?s thinking, no how no way. My comments arent intended to judge anyone who has taken or rejected blood, just to show the hypocrasy of the Society's position
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  IP_SEC
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  Gill

  Thanks for the interesting change in doctrine TD.

  It still amazes me how JWs spout that this is increasing light from Jehovah. They can't see it as the GB not knowing what they're doing.

  I will go back and say to my parents that this was changed to a disassociating offence in 2000 and show them the BBC news report but am beginning to wonder whether it can penetrate their minds. The reason being, that when I gave them the phone number and name for the person at the UN they need to ring to find out if JWs had been in the UN they claimed that this 'person' could be the biggest liar on earth for all I knew and that everyone was out to get the WTBTS and Jws. Dense...or what!?
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  rebel8

  Thanks, BluesBrother and TD, for the info.

  I am still not convinced the JWs really endorse use of Factor VIII. Serums used for vaccinations use only a minute amount of blood to produce a medication. The resulting medication is not a blood product. I guess you could liken it to eating a bread made from yeast--the bread couldn't have been made w/o yeast, but most of its volume is other ingredients. Eating straight yeast is a different thing.

  Factor VIII is transfused in units, just like whole blood. The only difference between Factor VIII and whole blood is this. Clotting factor--which is a blood cell--is removed from about 3000 units of whole blood to produce one unit of Factor VIII. The entire product is made 100% from human blood, not a minute part of it, as in serums/vaccinations. Factor VIII, for a significant bleed, is given in doses of several units--again more evidence that accepting such treatment is far from taking a "small amount" of blood.

  The JW quote:

  "What, however, about accepting serum injections to fight against disease, such as are employed for ...hemophilia ...?"

  The only serum injection I could find used to treat a bleeding disorder is Factor VIIa http://www.hemophilia.org/research/masac/masac134.htm. The National Hemophilia Organization (US) says: "Recombinant factor VIIa is produced by baby hamster kidney cells. No human albumin is used in its production or formulation; bovine serum albumin is used in its production." This, again, is an example of a product made from a small amount of blood, just like serums and vaccinations, but is not a blood transfusion. This product is very different than Factor VIII.

  "Some Christians believe that accepting a small amount of a blood derivative for such a purpose would not be a manifestation of disrespect for God?s law; their conscience would permit such...Others, though, feel conscientiously obliged to refuse serums because these contain blood, though only a tiny amount."

  Factor VIII is far from being a "tiny amount" of human blood.
• 

  shadow

  deleted for poor formatting
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  blondie

  The WTS makes its own 'rules' and they don't have to make sense or be medically logical. All a JW wants to hear is that the WTS considers the use of a certain product is a "conscience" matter. That is why many will use hemoglobin-based products such as Polyheme, even though they know it is made out of stored blood.

  ***

  w90 6/1 p. 31 Questions From Readers ***

  Others have felt that a serum (antitoxin), such as immune globulin, containing only a tiny fraction of a donor?s blood plasma and used to bolster their defense against disease, is not the same as a life-sustaining blood transfusion. So their consciences may not forbid them to take immune globulin or similar fractions*. They may conclude that for them the decision will rest primarily on

  whether they are willing to accept any health risks involved in an injection made from others? blood.

  *Footnote/

  w90 6/1 p. 31 Questions From Readers

  One example is Rh immune globulin, which doctors may recommend when there is Rh incompatibility between a woman and her fetus. Another is Factor VIII, which is given to hemophiliacs.

  http://www.ajwrb.org/science/allowed.shtml

  Hemophiliac preparations (Factor VIII and IX): Effective treatment requires a preparation called factor VIII, which assists in clotting and is made of the pooled blood of many individuals. The WTS has frequently argued that these are small blood fractions. In truth, however, it takes about 9000 kilograms of whole blood to make one 0.1 gram dose of Factor VIII. A person suffering from severe hemophilia typically requires several doses a year.

  The Society is not ignorant of this:

  "Each batch of Factor VIII is made from plasma that is pooled from as many as 2,500 blood donors." (The Watchtower, June 15, 1985, p. 30)

  "Dr. Margaret Hilgartner of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center said: "A severe hemophiliac is exposed to the blood of 800,000 to 1 million different people every year."" (Awake! Oct. 8, 1988, p. 11)

  More than 250,000 blood donations are required annually to produce the factor VIII, and factor IX that is consumed by the Jehovah's Witness community. Huge vats could be filled with all of the human blood that is stored and processed to meet the needs of Witness Hemophiliacs.

  The society ignores these facts when explaining why it allows use of these "small fractions," but cynically emphasizes them when it uses AIDS as propaganda against blood transfusions. Then, of course, it boasts how the blood prohibition protects us from AIDS. But as we see here, Factor VIII is permitted, so the blood prohibition gives no protection to hemophiliacs. This will be further investigated below.

  It is bewildering that the WTS society will allow all of the above components to be transfused or injected into a Witnesses patient separately, but if you were to take all of them at once and add water the resultant mix (plasma or FFP) is forbidden. It has been said that this is the equivalent of a doctor telling a patient that he may not eat ham and swiss on rye sandwiches. However, he may take the sandwich apart and eat the separate components of the sandwich.
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  GetBusyLiving

  What really gets my goat is how the GB tries to make the reader feel that Witnesses can individually choose what ever they want as far as blood fractions go, but that they UNANIMOUSLY all agree that whole blood transfusions are wrong. They are being told what THEY believe! It's all in the way they word things. The average joe blow witness doesn't know shit about blood fractions or even the societys stand on taking them. All they know is that they have the 'truth' and that everyone deciding not to be a JW is wrong. It blows my mind.
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  LittleToe

  Bait n switch, Bait n switch.