Increasing awareness about cases like the woman in Ghana, is a double-edged sword.
We would like to think that media attention will pressure the WTS to change their bloody doctrine, or for countries to change laws so children can get blood. However, i don't think that the media attention will result in that outcome - what it will do is increase the public's perception that there is a demand and need for "bloodless" technology.
The people who are rubbing their hands in glee over this woman's death, are the JWs who are profiting from the biotechnology companies that they work for, promote, and are invested in. Each death from blood refusal adds to the demand of the market.
The article in the OP links to an editorial concerning JWs refusing blood transfusions for their children in Ghana.
Ghana: A-G Must Intervene in Jehovah's Witnesses Bunkum
The comment section is telling. The WTS has been very successful in perpetuating medical myths and lies through the spread of their propaganda.The noblood propaganda and lies extend across the world.
Several people who responded to the article reveal the level of ignorance that is encouraged by WTS sites like noblood:
"This is sheer lunacy. Far more people have died from taking "life-saving" transfusions due to hemoletic reactions and blood-borne disease than have ever died from refusing a transfusion."
That statement is misinformed and inaccurate.
Lee Elder, you had your hands full responding to the people who posted replies. Well done - but I am not sure if anything can combat the lies that they have been told. The bloody doctrine seems to have a tighter hold on people than even the concept of god does - the WTS uses their twisted "science" in the same way they use the "bible" to support their twisted religious doctrine.
Here is another sadly ignorant comment:
"Blood transfusions do not save live. Replacing lost volume wirh volume expanders does. People die from two reasons: trams or disease. Medical science has found that the safe course is always non-blood medical management. The author of this article is uninformed and thus very biased."
Again, Lee, you gave a great reply to that very wrong comment.
I do not know how to combat the misinformation that is perpetuated by the WTS and their noblood propaganda teams, but the level of deceit that is fed to people who lack the skills and resources to access valid medical facts is astounding, and criminal.
"It is not true transfusions are required. Many hospitals around the world are blood free operations. The USA Military is going blood free in its hospitals, forward line units."
This is a horribly misinformed statement - yes, the military uses techniques to reduce the amount of blood required - but they DO NOT "go blood free". The military cannot go blood free. They MUST abide by a resuscitation model, which includes giving blood when required - even if the patient undergoes surgery using autologous transfusion technology, blood is always on hand if required. Always. It is only the JWs who are allowed to die on the table - everybody else gets to use the back up safety valve - they get blood when they need it.
There are many medical studies that report that the use of a cell saver increases bleeding during surgery and after. The cell savers will sometimes, but not always, reduce the need for an allogenic blood transfusion. Sometimes, more allogenic blood transfusions are needed when cell savers are used, not less.
As I said before, I have no idea how to educate JWs and exJWs about TTAB- the truth about blood. The WTS has been perpetuating lies about blood for decades - my father, inactive for over 45 years, attended the Canadian Kingdom Ministry School in Toronto back in the early 60s and he still retains the idea that a blood substitute was easily and readily used instead of blood - and with as good or better result than blood. That is the lie he was told by the WTS way back in 1965. He still believes it to be true. He has no idea that JWs were used by the US military to test blood volume expanders during the 60s - and that many of those JWs died from drowning as a result of testing the tolerable levels of volume expanders - .they died because of the alternatives being tested on them.
My father still believes that there is a safe and easy alternative to blood - he retains the idea that the doctors can just grab a different bag of fluid and hang it on the pole instead of blood - that is what he was told in 1965. And that isn't true.
It seems to be far easier to dismantle the lies around the biblical basis for the noblood stance, than it is to uproot the medical lies that the WTS has told.
And that means that women like the one in the article will continue to die. Women are more likely to need blood than men, and yet, the men make the rules. Women have no say in the making of the rules - they just are told to obey the directive to sacrifice their lives. Little do they know that their death will only translate into profit for the JWs who promote the "bloodless" technology that they are invested in..
