JW QUESTIONS COULD SAVE A LIFE

 

Recently a tragic event in the University Hospital of San Antonio, Texas was videotaped and aired on the television documentary "Trauma: Life, in the ER."

A retirement-aged couple was badly injured in a vehicular accident and both lost a lot of blood. The emergency team moved quickly and decisively to save them. While knowing that each of them had a blood count that was far too low, they were preparing for transfusion when the woman yelled out "no blood!" They were Jehovah's Witnesses. The doctor and her team were momentarily stunned, but within a second or two they were scrambling to do everything they could, now working much more against the odds.

The husband was unconscious but on the basis of their religious conviction, the doctor complied with the wife's demand. They increased the blood volume with blood expanding liquids, but this was not enough and the man died. The doctor asked the woman if they could clean her own blood that she was still losing, and put it back into circulation. The woman refused this as well, and with a low blood count a few days after surgery, she died of resulting complications.

It just happens that the Jan. 8, 2000 issue of the Awake! magazine, published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, lists some alternatives to blood transfusions acceptable for Jehovah's Witnesses which includes the use of a machine that cleans the lost blood of a patient and puts the blood back into circulation. The article is complete with a photograph of a salvaging machine.

The WatchTower Society, which dictates the rules that Jehovah's Witnesses must adhere to such as "abstaining from blood," is continually adding to, updating, modifying, and even retracting these rules and regulations that it says are God's laws or directives.
Perhaps if this accident didn't happen until after the new year, the Jehovah's Witness lady and maybe even her husband would be alive had she read the latest WatchTower update on blood.

At one time the WatchTower denounced vaccinations and Jehovah's Witnesses were known to fake a vaccination mark on their child's arm with a drop of acid. Later the WatchTower said organ transplants were the same as cannibalism. Both of these of objections were later dropped.

Since 1945 they have taught that blood transfusions are a sin against God but have been adding to a list of certain blood factions that are acceptable. The reason given is that the allowed factions are just a tiny part of the whole blood. However, one of the acceptable components is a much larger percentage than some that are rejected.

When hearing of Jim Jones, who claimed to be the Messiah and caused hundreds of followers to drink poison and had others shot who tried to escape, or David Koreas, alias Jesus Christ, who led so many to their death in Waco, Texas, we are shocked and horrified. The Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses at WatchTower headquarters in Brooklyn, New York also claimed to be, along with Jesus Christ, part of the complete. "Christ" now known as the "anointed class."
Since all the of the Jehovah's Witnesses or their children who have died because of rejecting vaccinations, organ transplants or blood products have died over a period of time, and not all in the same place, we are not impacted like we were by the Jonestown massacre. But these men, women and children have died just the same, following the directives of these few men in Brooklyn.

Since the Watch Tower claims that these are actually God's directives, not man's, perhaps you could ask the next Jehovah's Witness you see why God would forbid blood transfusions but allow some blood fractions and not others. Maybe your question will save a life some day. Ted Brown, February 29, 2000