"Knocking" Director, Joel Engardio, wonders why JWs bother to adhere to a no-blood theology

by AndersonsInfo 5 Replies latest watchtower medical

• 

  AndersonsInfo

  http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/02/witnesses_blood_and_spiritual_complications.html

  Witnesses, blood and spiritual complications

  By Joel P. Engardio
  writer, documentary filmmaker

  Blood transfusions and Jehovah's Witnesses make dramatic stories. Life and death determined by religious faith was on trial last year in Canada where the Supreme Court ruled that blood can be forced on children of Jehovah's Witnesses while some "mature minors" can decide their own medical fate. Russia's high court was much less accommodating. It said the belief against blood is a danger to society that warrants a ban of the religion. In the United States, a young Jehovah's Witness mother who refused a potentially life-saving lung transplant because it would likely require a blood transfusion was front page news in the Washington Post this week.

  The twist in Maribel Perez's story, featured in Wednesday's editions of The Washington Post, is that she changed her mind. She is now willing to have the operation with blood because she feared leaving her two elementary school-age children motherless. Her Jehovah's Witness congregation has reportedly shunned her.

  The drama in these stories is inherent because the religious objection to blood only amplifies stakes that are high to begin with -- people sick enough to need organ transplants can still die even with the blood transfusion. So Jehovah's Witnesses are left with what appear to be impossible choices: Say no to blood and risk orphaning your children, consent to a procedure that might not work and leave family behind anyway, have a successful operation with blood but face the shame of disobeying your God and alienation from family and friends still in the faith.

  Yet the issue of Jehovah's Witnesses and blood is not always that clear-cut. I made the PBS documentary

  Every medical center Seth contacted in his home state of Texas turned him down, but the University of Southern California agreed to take his case (it was once said liver transplants could never be done without blood and now they are). USC has a transfusion-free surgery program that specializes in "bloodless" procedures and has been working with Jehovah's Witness patients for years to develop better medical technology in every area from knee replacements to heart surgery and organ transplants. The hospital even applies the "bloodless" techniques to the general population for cleaner, safer operations that reduce infection risk and lower cost, saving blood transfusions only for when they are absolutely necessary. That's the kind of treatment I would personally want, as someone who isn't one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

  Nearly 200 hospitals in the United States have some sort of "bloodless" program, and the concept is catching on. Even the U.S. military is interested. The Department of Defense is paying Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in New Jersey nearly $5 million to train military doctors how to perform "bloodless" surgery.

  Note "bloodless" is in quotes. Many of the technologies and medicines used to reduce or replace blood contain traces of blood in the manufacturing process. An organ transplant will always have residual blood.

  My mother is one of Jehovah's Witnesses and the advance medical directive she and all Jehovah's Witnesses are asked to fill out contains a menu of choices. They can choose or decline a number of treatment options that have some sort of blood fraction but fall short of an all-out whole blood transfusion. Many Jehovah's Witnesses, like my mom, pick options tailored to their personal conscience. Some are absolutists who won't take anything linked to blood. And not all Jehovah's Witnesses will accept an organ transplant, which was not allowed until 1980. But Jehovah's Witnesses who do take transplants say their intention is to get the organ, not the residual blood that comes with it.

  A doctor I interviewed for KNOCKING treats many Jehovah's Witnesses but said he sees a "logical disconnect" with the religion's stated beliefs and their nuanced approach to blood: whether it was a fraction of blood or a whole bag of transfused blood, it was still blood. I agree. However, where my mom is concerned, I like the idea that she doesn't have to follow a one-size-fits-all blood policy dictated by her religion. Still, if some nuance is allowed, I wonder why the religion bothers to adhere to a no-blood theology in the first place -- or at least make the leap that the Biblical ban on eating blood includes modern transfusions?

  I suspect legal considerations weigh heavily on Jehovah's Witnesses as an organized religion. While it may have been easy to "disfellowship" or excommunicate a member for taking blood years ago, the religion today would be open to devastating lawsuits if its members were forced to make certain medical decisions. High-ranking Jehovah's Witnesses I interviewed for KNOCKING said no one is excommunicated now for taking blood, but a member who willfully chooses blood has voluntarily chosen to leave the faith. Which raises another nuance in the policy: Witness officials I interviewed said a member who takes a blood transfusion while in an "emotional state and under pressure" deserves "pastoral care and compassion." They can remain a Witness as long as they don't advocate that blood transfusions are good, that they would do it again and others should do it, too.

  I can't help but think about the young Jehovah's Witness mother featured on the front page of the Washington Post. Whether through a hospital pioneering new technology or the increasingly nuanced approach Jehovah's Witnesses take to blood, perhaps there is a way she can get her lung transplant while keeping her faith after all.

  Joel P. Engardio directed the award-winning PBS documentary KNOCKING about Jehovah's Witnesses. His essays have been broadcast on NPR and appeared in USA Today.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/02/witnesses_blood_and_spiritual_complications.html
  

  KNOCKING, which featured a 23-year-old Jehovah's Witness who needed a liver transplant. Seth Thomas wanted to abide by his religious conviction that blood is sacred - a life force that Jesus shed to absolve humankind's sin - and was not to be eaten, as the Bible commanded (extended to transfusions today). So Seth refused any surgery that would require blood. But Seth still wanted to live. He thought of the girlfriend he wanted to marry and a full life ahead. Seth didn't rely on prayer alone; he also put hope in medical technology, searching for hospitals willing to give him a liver transplant without transfusing blood.

  http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/02/witnesses_blood_and_spiritual_complications.html
• 

  moshe

  JW's are lucky that they can find any doctors to operate on them, seeing as how they are just difficult patients. 99.9% of the doctor's patients are not JW's so they don't need their problems or business. Interesting expose' of the weasel words that the WT org uses, they don't disfellowship, but if you accept blood you have just volunteered to disassociate yourself, so we will shun you anyway. Nice people to avoid.
• 

  MrMonroe

  This double talk was also discussed by Oregon bioethicist Osamu Muramoto in his article, "Bioethics of the refusal of blood by Jehovah's Witnesses, part 3" in the Journal of Medical Ethics, 1999 (Google it if you want to read all his fascinating and forthright papers on the subject). He noted that a public agreement was made in March 1998 between the WTS and the Bulgarian government at the European Commission of Human Rights. In the agreement, the WTS declared that its members "have free choice" to receive blood transfusions "without any control or sanction on the part of the association".

  Futher on in his paper, Muramoto wrote:

  A WTS official in (a subsequent) BBC interview argued that a JW who accepts blood would never be automatically disfellowshipped. If he expresses remorse and repentance before a judicial committee, he will not be punished with the most severe religious sanction. He also argued that unrepentant JWs who received blood are disfellowshipped not because of the fact that they received blood, but because they abandoned the doctrine of the religious organisation.

  Muramoto points out the hypocrisy in the statement: the end result for any JW who exercises his "free choice" and chooses to accept blood is expulsion and shunning. A JW on the talk page of the Wikipedia article on Jehovah's Witnesses has similarly argued that Witnesses are free to choose on the issue of transfusions. This is clearly the new party line for the public, but it's a hollow claim indeed when anyone who makes a choice contrary to WTS teaching is booted out.
• 

  Mary

  High-ranking Jehovah's Witnesses I interviewed for KNOCKING said no one is excommunicated now for taking blood, but a member who willfully chooses blood has voluntarily chosen to leave the faith.

  This bullshit is nothing but a play with semantics in a desperate attempt for the WTS to downplay their disgusting practice of excommunicating people who's 'gross sin' is trying to either save the life of their spouse or child, or themselves. When someone "voluntarily leaves" the Organization, they make the choice THEMSELVES. What happens if someone accepts a blood transfusion and does not want to "voluntarily leave"? You are given no choice by the powers that be and you are forced out with the end result being the same as when they disfellowship someone.

  It's like working at a company, finding out they're doing something illegal and refusing to participate in it. They tell you if you don't do what they say, then you have "voluntarily quit" your job in order for them to avoid a lawsuit, but in reality, they've fired you.

  He also argued that unrepentant JWs who received blood are disfellowshipped not because of the fact that they received blood, but because they abandoned the doctrine of the religious organisation.

  Note how you're not disfellowshipped for 'going against the bible' or even 'going against Jehovah', but rather for going against "the doctrine of the religious organization." Does that make it official that the WTB&TS has officially usurped Jehovah as Supreme Ruler? How do they justify that when their (pathetic) doctrines are changed down the road? I mentioned this to my sister the other night, as she is struggling with 'guilt' now, for allowing my b-i-l to have blood transfusions. I said to her "the very fact that they have to change these doctrines means that they weren't right in the first place!"
• 

  rebel8

  Too little, too late.

  Joel has done a lot of damage.
• 

  designs

  If you are going to be Religious or run a Religion you had better figure out the equation of Venial vs Mortal sins.