Romeo or is that Juliet? Taking a blood transfusion is definitely not a guarantee to live. Blood isn’t everyone’s favorite topic. In fact, you’d probably feel a lot better if it just stayed inside your body where it belongs. But blood transfusions save lives every day. Hospitals need blood for people who are injured, as well as for patients having heart surgery, organ transplants, cancer treatments, and treatments for other diseases that affect the blood, like sickle cell anemia. In fact, about 5 million people each year in the United States get blood transfusions. In almost every situation, the benefits of having a blood transfusion far outweigh the risks.
If you do a search on the web you will notice lots of people who died from not taking blood transfusions. Compared to very few who died for being given the wrong blood or similar matters, which the problem is not the blood but human error. You do not see a case of someone dying from taking blood, as that only increases the change of expanding your life.

And yes jw’s are the worst of the worst!

If JWs are truthful they have to admit that their stance on blood is a religious one. They are choosing not to take blood because of the scriptures they have been taught that supposedly support their stand. If anyone is refusing a blood transfusion based purely on the actual risks & benefits of the drug (as it is being used therapeutically) then as long as they are of sound mind and and uncoerced this is absolutely the patients choice.

Can you be uncoerced if you’ve been taught that you will die at the hands of God if you accept a transfusion? They may have removed the automatic disfellowshipping rule but the message remains - you will stand in judgement at Armageddon and lose, so
sacrificing your eternal life.

For many the transfusion offered is to support a low Hb speeding up recovery from anaemia - patient choice, medically refusal is a reasonable choice.

Referring to my previous comment, I know of a newborn baby who died at a few weeks old due to rhesus incompatibility, did that baby have a choice? A blood transfusion WOULD have saved her life. This brings me back to the JW conditional love that I have been at the receiving end of. If someone put a gun to mine & my daughter’s head I would take the shot for her. If my daughter needed blood to save her life I would sacrifice mine to save hers. I don’t believe that God would kill me for saving the life of my daughter, after all isn’t blood supposed to representative of the sanctity of life - how can it be OK to let them die if life is sacred?

Jehovah can’t be behind the prohibition, otherwise the gradual watering down of the ban would not have happened. How can it be OK to take immunoglobulins, plasma, platelets etc separately but not mixed in the same bag - what is the difference? If the ban was divine - how could Jehovah change his mind? All the changes have happened since 1914 when Jesus supposedly took power (assuming 607 BCE was the starting pt - whole other issue!) Is Jesus such a poor leader that he can’t guide the congregation the right way in the first place? And if the issue is one of Jehovah not enjoying a perfect channel of communication - ie imperfect humans listening - how can any of the bible be trusted? He supposedly managed to get that message across untainted over thousands of yrs..

So can you really choose to throw away life if you are a Christian? This is one very dangerous religion and I’m desperately worried for my family who are as brainwashed as the rest.

Hi Ray,

Actually they can - its OK to lie if the person doesn’t have the right to that information aka will use it to expose any jw representative as a liar(see elder lies in court), and from personal experience its fine if you’re an elder & questioned about pretty much anything that you don’t want to admit to. Paedolhilia may be reasonably considered by the educated as fornication - and that’s fine too as long as the JW name is kept out of the papers.

And you are right, can you imagine the law suits if the blood prohibition was lifted altogether, practically murder of all the people who were threatened with losing their life at armageddon if they took a transfusion so they refused so they wouldn’t lose their eternal life and lost this one. Already the propaganda machine is in motion - newer witnesses apparently believe that accepting blood transfusions has always been a conscience matter. This is a master WT technique and it constantly amazes me how it continues to work. For all jws out there try comparing what is written in any jw literature with the questions at the bottom of the paragraph & listen to the answers these provoke. What is verbally indoctrinated is also accepted worldwide as ‘truth’ and so cannot be just the readers mis-interpretation of what they wrote. It does remove any liability form the society though should they need to retract anything later on - they never committed anything to paper in the first place. This is a fairly new strategy, learned the hard way and saves them having make sure no older copies of any magazines etc are available, not so easy in the internet age.

I’d hate to be in any JW shoes if armageddon does ever strike, the ‘I didn’t know’ defence is going to be hard to prove..

It is not your choice any more than it was the choice of the members of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple to drink the Kool-Aid. They were unjustly influenced. I hope it becomes a law and not another Jehovah’s Witnesses loses his or her life based on the Watchtower Corporation’s dictates.

Ask yourself, would you work for a company that claimed to be the best company to work for but as a condition of employment you are not allowed to associate w/ anyone that left the company or read anything written about the company other than the company itself? A person with a free mind would say “of course not…sounds like they have something to hide.” What about your religion? Alienated religious cults love to throw around the word “truth”, well if it is truth, it has nothing to hide.

As a JW, you are not allowed to read anything that exposes the reality behind the multi layered cult that has over 100 years of perfecting its deception. If you can’t bring yourself to look at the facts, read something that has nothing to do about JW’s, “Combating Cult Mind Control” by Steven Hassan a journey in and out of the Unification Church, aka, The Moonies.

I know the above was blunt but I hope to see as many people as possible freed from this sophisticated cult. If you can’t honestly look at the facts, I recommend you truly live according to the Watchtower’s dictates; since the “end is near” don’t be a half hearted Jehovah’s Witness (all to willing to practice the cult, family destroying, tactic of shunning but living and working as if this world will continue), do everything they tell you, don’t pursue higher education, put “the Kingdom first”, “trust in Jehovah”, go to Bethel, sell your assets and move to where the “need is great.”

Hi Michelle,
You are right, making a decision for someone that results in their death is a huge responsibility.

I know of a baby that died at 8 weeks old due to rhesus incompatibility. She died of anaemia with a blood count of 1.2, there is absolutely no doubt that her life would have been saved by a blood transfusion, or several.
When I was in my teens taking anti D was forbidden because it was a blood product, now that is OK. its not OK for the hundreds of babies that died 20 yrs ago because the society hadn’t changed their mind yet. Last I heard stillbirths weren’t entitled to a resurrection. Who is responsible for their deaths?

He gave us life to value and enjoy. JW’s are the only group who merrily throw away life on a questionable interpretation, no other scholars i know agree. Alot of Paul’s other ‘commandments’ are not followed to the same degree unless times have changed and now women are not permitted to speak in the cong, and if they want to know anything (heaven forbid they may know more than the men) they should ask their own husbands at home. And before you hail the old testament law to spill animal blood on the floor before eating it - that law was nailed to the stake & if you want to reinstate you’re gonna have to start stoning adulterers and be as Godly as the lawmakers in Iran. But then I guess they may interpret the world’s outrage as persecution for their righteous stand too.

You sound like an intelligent woman, how terrible would it be if Jehovah never meant JWs to sacrifice their children in his name?