In my last post I connected William Walker from Hemosonics with Bill Walker, the supposed inventor of the Lapin Clear Cut knife. However, upon further reflection, I believe that Wm. Walker is far too young to be the same person. But I do suspect he is related to him. I haven't had time to confirm that.
Biil: That JW Insurance Co I think was called "New World Life" or something like that, in-laws had it.
Interesting I have a friend who was raised a JW but realized it was not for him, he is a ER doctor. He said all ER Rooms have the JW Blood book but not for the purpose of educating the doctors but to educate the JW patients as to their own churchs list to what is acceptable blood parts. Prior to the book the JW patients were ignorant of what was approved and what was not, hence the whole ER Room procedure was halted and precious time was lost as the patient had to go and consult their church elders. So the book has been well received as to its ability to stop vast amounts of time being tied up from getting elders permission for ER procedures.
There are lots of health care insurance companies that are JW owned and operated now. I have run into several in my research. I haven't bothered to keep track of them.
The JW Blood Book that is given to doctors to use has more to do with ethical considerations than anything else. At one time, when a JW was confronted with surgery, all that happened was they signed a form giving the hospital permission to use whatever alternative procedures were necessary - as long as blood wasn't used. I think that this created an ethical issue that was eventually resolved with the HLC designing a book that laid out the procedures and drugs that are being used for medical studies. When the JW signs permission for these different drugs, etc, it eliminates the problems of informed consent for clinical trials, etc.
The Jehovah's Witness population has been targeted for many unapproved drugs and procedures and Ron Lapin was one of the doctors who took advantage of the JWs willingness to act as guinea pigs. He was involved in getting Fluosol DA-20 into the American market through the use of JWs as test subjects.
The book, No Man's Blood, claims that Lapin was contacted by a Japanese doctor to trial Fluosol DA-20 on Jehovah's Witnesses.
He was looking forward to his meeting. He hadn’t seen Dr. Naito since they’d met quite by accident at a medical conference in Washington, D.C., the year before. They had followed each other’s careers and corresponded ever since.
Naito was the president of the Green Cross Pharmaceutical Company of Osaka, Japan. His staff nicknamed him “the steam locomotive,” a term befitting his workaholic behavior and uncanny ability to cut through red tape. His company was in the business of developing new medicines and was the eighth largest and fastest growing firm in Japan. The medicine that held Lapin’s particular interest was Fluosol-DA, a synthetic blood substitute.
Fluosol-DA 20 % is a perfluorocarbon chemical compound derived from the petroleum distillate process and is closely related to Teflon. It has the remarkable ability of transporting oxygen to the body tissues, unlike many of the blood substitutes used by doctors today. This miracle fluid is only one one-thousandth the size of hemoglobin, allowing Fluosol to penetrate into areas where blood cells would be too large to enter. Fluosol also carries three to six times more oxygen than an equivalent amount of red cells.
Fluorocarbons were originally developed during World War II to separate uranium isotopes necessary for atomic bombs. In the mid-60s, American researchers Drs. Clark, Sloviter, and Geyer demonstrated that perfluorochemicals provide sufficient CO2 to maintain life in animals and that they could be emulsified. This generated the idea that fluorocarbons might be developed as an effective blood substitute due to their superior oxygen-carrying qualities.
In Japan, Dr. Ryoichi Naito and his team of research scientists and clinicians developed Fluosol. Dr. Naito’s research began in 1967. Tests on animals were conducted for ten years in both Japan and the United States. In the fall of 1978, German researchers used the red cell replacement to maintain biological function for as long as twenty-four hours in seven brain-dead accident victims.
Dr. Naito, a man in his seventies, was considered the leader in the development of Fluosol. In February, 1979, he and nine associates were injected with Fluosol to prove its human safety. Dr. Naito believed that a medical researcher should demonstrate confidence in his invention by first trying it personally. But without extensive research and testing, the FDA wouldn’t authorize the use of Fluosol in the United States. It bothered Lapin considerably that their testing processes were so slow. He, more than most, knew that bureaucratic resistance to change held back progress.
Lapin met with Dr. Naito and Dr. Drees:
Naito introduced Lapin to Dr. Tom Drees. Drees was president of the Alpha Corporation, a subsidiary of the Green Cross Company. Lapin and Drees were destined to become good friends while working closely together for the international acceptance of Fluosol.
This is what was apparently said at the meeting between Dr. Drees, Dr. Naito and Ron Lapin:
Naito leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “We’ve been keeping up with you, Dr. Lapin, and your remarkable successes with the Witnesses.” Lapin shrugged and nodded a modest acknowledgment. Naito continued, “Our board has been continually impressed with the operations you’ve performed without transfusions.”
“You came to give me an award?” Lapin quipped.
“You don’t need any more accolades, do you?”
“You know what I need.”
And Naito did. “We want to talk to you about the possibility of a cooperative effort with you and your team. We would be honored if you would be the first in the country to actually use Fluosol on one of your patients.”
Lapin beamed. “You would be honored… I’m the one who’d be honored,” he said excitedly.
“You’ve done what now… twenty-eight hundred operations without using blood?”
Lapin was impressed. “You do your homework,” he said.
“That’s our business, research and development.”
“Did you get it approved by the FDA?”
“Not so far, but our sources in Washington tell us they may approve a research protocol for its use only on Jehovah’s Witnesses. This is where you and your patients become very important to the project.”
Lapin was so pleased with the news he was speechless. Naito continued, “The Witnesses, with their religious conviction against taking blood transfusions, make ideal test subjects.”
“Are you concerned about the Red Cross trying to stop this project?” Lapin asked.
“No,” replied Naito. “Fluosol is too good a substance to be stopped by them or any other group of narrow-minded people.”
And that is what happened. Fluosol DA-20 was introduced in the States through the FDA's "compassionate use" program and it was used exclusively on JWs to begin with. Biotechnology of BloodIn the USA, Fluosol DA-20 was tested first on a humanitarian protocol basis where each patient required FDA approval. After six patients received Fluosol DA-20, a medical use protocol was established with strict criteria for patient enrollment. the objectives of this study were to determine clinical safety, hemodynamic, and oxygen transport profiles of Fluosol DA-20. In contrast to earlier reports, fully one-third of the patients experienced an acute reaction to infusion of a 0.5-ml test dose of Fluosol DA-20 which was controlled by treatment with corticosteriods.
Fluosol DA 20% was withdrawn in 1994:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_substitute
The first approved oxygen-carrying blood substitute was a perfluorocarbon-based product called Fluosol-DA-20, manufactured by Green Cross of Japan. It was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1989. Because of limited success, complexity of use and side effects, it was withdrawn in 1994. However, Fluosol-DA remains the only oxygen therapeutic ever fully approved by the FDA.
When a JW signs consent for blood fractions or blood substitutes, what they are actually doing is enrolling in medical studies. The JW "blood book" is a recruitment tool for the HLC so that they can enroll JW patients into the trials and studies that they are recruiting for. Or, the drug is an experimental drug that requires FDA compassionate approval - a process that propels many drugs to market that don't get approval for clinical trials. And it is all done under the guise of "helping these poor JWs who would die otherwise".
