Have I missed something here? Unless I have, it seems that you are squarely contradicting a statement in my quoted paragraph you used. Specifically, “[A] rather significant number of open-heart operations using blood substitutes have been performed [my emphasis]…”
Doesn’t this say plainly that operations using blood substitutes have (already) been performed? On this basis, how on earth can you say, in the next paragraph, that ‘there are no blood substitutes’? How can this be when the verb form that is used in the paragraph is “have been performed”–in the present-perfect tense, as they say in Spanish?
Unless there’s a passage in the quoted paragraph that I have overlooked, you, Holly, are flying straight in the face of someone else’s quoted fact–a physician or medical writer, mind you, not a Jehovah’s Witness.
Okay, let me clarify. Yes, there are blood substitutes. Hespan, normal saline, pondwater, or any other liquid substance can be used in place of blood. IV fluids can perform a few of the functions of blood.
Open heart surgery can be done without blood transfusion. I have not personally seen a Jehovah’s Witness survive for long after having heart surgery without transfusion, but I accept that it’s possible and has occurred.
My point is this: though there are some substances that are used as blood substitutes, there is no adequate substitute for blood at this time. There is no artificial version of blood that can do all the life-sustaining duties of blood. IV fluid can expand blood volume by dilution, but it cannot carry oxygen. It’s not like you can give a person who is bleeding to death a few liters of IV fluid and expect that to fix the problem.
If there existed a good blood substitute, doctors would not use blood, ever.
Hey, what if a JW’s child is forced into a transfusion, and the child sinds up with hepatitis-c or AIDS? What remedy do the parents have?
winds up with…
capacitor: What exactly is your point here?
Nobody is saying that you see a doctor and poof everything is hunky dory. Things happen.
In your example, if it is malpractice, the dorctors will pay via a law suit and damage to reputation. If not, it is unfortunate, but we did all we could.
However, what others suggest result in: “We did NOT do all we could. In fact, we did nothing.”
Yer pal,
Satan
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My point is maybe JW’s wish to have their children avoid such “unfortunate” side-effects as a result of a forced operation. I believe that it is quite a legitimate reason to avoid blood transfusions if possible. it has only been in vogue since WWII, and many doctors are searching alternatives to blood because the safety of screening cannot be 100%.
That seems a wholly disingenuous argument though capacitor. “There’s a 75% chance you’re child will live with the transfusion, but a 0.01% chance that he will contract a blood-bourne disease. On the other hand, he has a 100% chance of not contracting the disease without the transfusion, but only a 30% chance to live.” Are you trying to accuse the JW’s of not even understanding basic math?
They understand the risks involved in taking the stance they take. It is also a 100% certainty that they may feel that they let their God down when a blood transfusion has been successfully forced upon them or their children.
But I think the argument being made is that the parents are infringing on the child’s right to life by refusing potentially life-saving procedures?
I may just be stewing after having read the whole thread in one sitting, but it seems like plain abuse to me to do that to a child. There may be arguments about the parents’ rights to raise their child however they want, but ‘however’ has some pretty hazy boundaries as has been pointed out.
The reluctance to allow transfusions isn’t originally based on concern for blood-borne diseases, it’s based on a passage in the Bible concerning consumption of blood. A passage I always kinda took (when I was even nominally Christian) to have something to do with idolatry and drinking blood as part of religious observance. Again, this could be way wrong.
There are also passages in the Bible telling you to break other commandments under extraordinary circumstances. Such as the one telling you that if you come upon a creature in distress on the Sabbath it’s okay to break Sabbath in order to assist said creature. I would assume this goes for people also.
Does this mean, perhaps, that breaking other ‘rules’ is okay in order to assist and perhaps save a human being’s life?
Personally, do whatever you as an adult want for yourself. Don’t force that sort of thing on a child. Let the kid grow up and decide right and wrong for him or herself.
Morals are a choice not a fact.
Just my own little rant.
How about this: what if the situation occured in a foreign country, where the local blood supply is not nearly as thoroughly screened as it is in the US. In fact here is a guide for travellers that essentially say to avoid whole blood in a foreign country as much as possible. If you visited Britain for at least six months since 1980, your blood is refused, because of the risk of mad cow disease. So under these circumstances, would such a stance by a JW against blood be more feasable? I would think so.
capacitor:
It is one thing to ay “I don’t want a transfusion because I think it’s more likely to hurt me than help me” (though I still think a doctor knows more about this than a layman).
It is quite another to say, “I am not getting a transfusion because God says drinking blood is bad in the Bible.”
Is this such a difficult distinction to comprehend?
Yer pal,
Satan
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Then why are they not allowed to make both arguments?
This is just personal opinion, but:
I’m Christian, yet I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with getting a blood transfusion or organ transplant or anything like that.
One of God’s names is “The Great Physician”. If we’re “in God’s image”, wouldn’t it follow that some of us would be called to the medical field?
I think it’s rather fishy that the Watchtower Society finally agreed to organ transplants. I’ve found in most hierarchies (be them political, social, or religious), the “rulers” will enforce ridiculous interpretations of laws until these laws conflict with something they want/need. It’s happened with every church, though, I’m not attacking JWs.
I think it’s cruelty to let a child suffer…they’re not adults, they’re going through vast amounts of pain most of the time, but all in all, they still have a voice.
I think it’s negligent homicide, pure and simple, but I suppose everyone’s got to have their choice.
But the kids aren’t getting an unbiased choice.
It is not fishy. It is an adjustment to positions based on medical advances. The original reason to object to organ transplants was that there was massive bleeding and that occurs during the operation. The blood was replaced by transfusion. Now operations are made with much less bloodshed and many times no blood is needed to be replaced, either by blood products or by substitution.
Here is another question: if you claim that blood is an organ transplant, should we force children to undergo other organ transplants by court decision as well?
BTW, the situation in Britain, I believe, makes the JW position look better and better all of the time. You probably haven’t heard about this in conventional news.
No; the original reasons The Watchtower objected to transplants were because they considered it to be cannibalism, and because they believed that transplants (especially heart transplants) would alter the personality and character of the recipient. Similarly, the Watchtower used to forbid the use of aluminum cookware because it was believed that aluminum cookware was the cause of severe health problems, from mental illness to cancer. Once it became clear that aluminum cookware was not the deadly threat the Watchtower believed it to be, the ban was quietly dropped.
Actually, I think the situation in Britain goes to show that there is at this time no good synthetic blood substitute, but if there was one, no one would ever get a transfusion. Yes, transfusion carries risks. Ideally it would never be necessary, but when a child is facing immediate death from hemorrhage, the doctor will not say, “Well, a transfusion would save his life, but we’d better not do it because we’ll be placing him at risk of contracting CJD”.
Of course I forgot to mention that the Watchtower does NOT forbid the use of albumin, which can carry CJD, so JW’s are not protected from contracting the disease. They are also allowed to get vaccinations, which may be infected with CJD. (Ironically, long before CJD was a real threat, JW’s were not allowed to be vaccinated.)
They lifted that ban in 1952. You shoud give them credit for adjusting their positions in the face of to medical and scientific advances as quickly as they did. Not too many religions in history have ever done that. They wrote that Galileo was right about the earth not being in the center of the universe before the Catholic Church did.
The JW ban on blood is supposed to be Biblical. It really shouldn’t matter how healthful or dangerous blood transfusions are since presumably JW’s would reject transfusion even if it could be proved without a doubt that all transfusions are completely safe or that transfusion is a miraculous cure for everything from sinus pressure to bowel cancer.
The Watchtower Society has never been a supporter of scientific advancement. They will happily quote snippets of studies that appear to support their agenda. They seem to adore statistics, especially the sort of statistics that claim hepatitis is growing at suchandsuch alarming rate or that so many Europeans don’t pray. They routinely run short educational articles, written in a style that is easily understood by fourth graders everywhere, and generally concluding that such and such South African spider is proof of how fantastic and loving Jehovah is.
The WTS has repeatedly discouraged its followers from pursuing college education. After all, if this world is going to end any day now, wouldn’t it make far more sense to spend every precious moment witnessing? What use will a college degree be after this world passes away? Besides, going to college is dangerous. Too many worldly influences.
The WTS has a long history of opposition to science. The WTS has openly clung to quackery. To claim that the WTS is honestly concerned with the advancement of science would be ludicrous.
If the Biblical warnings to avoid eating blood are so clear, it’s curious how the JW position on blood has wavered over the years. That is, the individual components of blood are almost randomly assigned as “acceptable” or “not acceptable”, and some of the blood components switch from one list to the other from time to time. Why, if the Biblical basis for the belief is so clear, does the WTS change its mind? Why are some components allowed, but others not?
So when will they adjust their position on blood transfusions, given the huge body of evidence supporting them?
They have, Mr2001. Whole blood is rarely used anymore, but several parts of blood instead. JW’s go into detail about what blood products are allowed and what are not, in adjusting to science, as discussed before.
Mr2001, blood transfusions is not a cure-all, and doctors are actively finding alternatives to using blood. As discussed before, they have developed replenishing fluids that can be applied to anyone who needs it, and these fluids are without the devastating side-effects associated with organ transplants, or the terminal side-effects peculiarly linked to blood trnsfusions. Doctors are looking to eliminate the need for transfusion in the future.
Another question: should we force children to undergo other transplants?