Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the Bible forbids the swallowing of blood and Christians should not accept blood transfusions or donate or store their own blood for transfusion. Beliefs are based on different scriptural interpretations of other Christian denominations. This is one of the most recognized doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses.
The Luther of Jehovah's Witnesses teaches that their rejection of whole blood transfusion or its four major components - red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and plasma - is a non-negotiable religious position and that those who honor life as a gift from God do not try to sustain life by taking blood, even in an emergency. Witnesses were taught that the use of fractions such as albumin, immunoglobulins, and hemophilia preparations is "not absolutely forbidden", and vice versa is a matter of personal preference.
This doctrine was introduced in 1945, and has undergone several changes since then. Members of the group who voluntarily accept transfusions and are not considered repentant are considered to have separated themselves from the group by abandoning their doctrines and then shunned by members of the organization. Although accepted by the majority of Jehovah's Witnesses, minorities do not support this doctrine.
The Watchtower Society has established Hospital Information Services to provide education and facilitate bloodless operations. The service also maintains the Hospital Liaison Committee, which serves to provide support to its adherents.
Video Jehovah's Witnesses and blood transfusions
Doctrine
On the basis of various biblical texts, including Genesis 9: 4, Leviticus 17:10, and Acts 15: 28,29, Jehovah's Witnesses believe:
- Blood represents life and holiness to God. After it has been removed from the creature, the only use of blood that God has inaugurated is for penance. When a Christian distances himself from the blood, they essentially declare the faith that only blood shed from Jesus Christ can truly redeem them and save their lives.
- Blood should not be eaten or transfused, even in a medical emergency.
- Blood leaving human or animal bodies should be discarded.
- Certain medical procedures involving blood fractions or those that use the patient's own blood during a medical procedure, such as hemodilution or cell rescue, are a matter of personal preference, according to one's conscience.
- An unconverted baptismal Witness receiving a blood transfusion is considered to have separated himself from the group by abandoning his doctrine and then subjecting to the exclusion of organized by other members.
Certain medical procedures involving blood are specifically prohibited by the blood doctrine of Jehovah's Witnesses. These include the use of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and blood plasma. Other fractions of blood origin are not prohibited. Watch Tower publications state that some products that come from one of the four main components may be very similar to the overall function of the component and continue the role of sustaining life in the body that "most Christians would find inappropriate". For procedures where there is no specific doctrinal prohibition, the individual must obtain details from the medical officer and then make a personal decision.
Prohibited procedure
The following medical procedures are prohibited:
- Allogeneic blood transfusion, or from red blood cell constituents, white blood cells, platelets or plasma.
- Pre-operated self-autologous blood transfusion.
Allowed procedures and products
The following procedures and products are not prohibited, and submitted to the decisions of each member:
- Blood donors are strictly for the purpose of further fractionation of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets or plasma for either allogenic or autologous transfusions.
- Autologous blood transfusion "current therapy".
- Hemodilusi, a modified technique in which the apparatus is arranged in a circuit always connected to the patient's circulatory system.
- Intraoperative blood salvage (autologous) or cell saver , method of taking blood that spills from the circulatory system to open wounds, cleansing and re-injecting.
- Heart-Lung Machine, a method in which blood is transferred to an artificial heart-lung machine and directed back to the patient.
- Dialysis, in which blood circulates through the machine, is filtered and cleaned, then returned to the patient.
- Epidural Blood Patch, consists of a small amount of blood of patients injected into the membrane that surrounds the spinal cord.
- Plasmaferesis, in which blood is drawn and filtered, after plasma is removed and replaced, and returned to the patient.
- Labeling or Labeling, blood drawn, mixed with drugs, and then returned to the patient through transfusion.
- Gel Platelet, blood is drawn and put into a solution of platelets and white blood cells.
- The fraction of red blood cells:
- Hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying component of red blood cells.
- Faction of white blood cells:
- Interferon
- Interleukin
- Fraction of platelets:
- Platelet factor 4
- Fraction of blood plasma:
- Albumin
- Globulin
- Cryoprecipitate
- Cryosupernatant (poor plasma cryo)
- Clotting factors, including Factor VIII and Factor IX, originate from a large amount of stored blood
- Wound healing factor
- Erythropoietin (EPO).
- PolyHeme, a blood-substituting solution for human-modified human hemoglobin.
- Hemopure, a chemically stable bovine hemoglobin replacement solution derived from cow blood.
Maps Jehovah's Witnesses and blood transfusions
Bloodless Surgery
Various bloodless surgical techniques have been developed for use in patients who refuse blood transfusions for reasons that include concerns about AIDS, hepatitis, and other bloodborne infections, or immune system reactions. Thousands of doctors around the world have expressed willingness to honor patients' preferences and provide bloodless treatment and about 200 hospitals offer bloodless medication and surgical programs for adult and child patients who want to avoid or restrict blood transfusions, or to avoid medications that conflict with Jehovah. Witness blood doctrine. Bloodless surgery has been successfully performed in invasive surgeries such as open heart surgery and total hip replacement. But medical and surgical techniques without limits have limitations, and surgeons say the use of a variety of allogenic blood products and/or preoperative autologous blood transfusions is the standard of care for some patient presentations.
In certain medical emergency cases when bloodless medicines are not available, blood transfusions may be the only means available to save lives. Watch Tower publications show that in such cases, Jehovah's Witnesses require that doctors provide the best possible alternative treatment under the circumstances, respecting their personal beliefs. The Watchtower Society has admitted that some members have died after refusing blood.
In some countries, including Canada and the UK, decisions of a parent or guardian may be legally denied by medical staff. In this case, medical staff may act without consent, by obtaining a court order in a non-emergency situation, or without such an order in an emergency. In Japan, doctors should respect the wishes of adults but may rule out the wishes of the child and their parents if the child is under 15. If a child is 15 to 17 years old, the doctor will not transfuse if the parents and children reject the transfusion. If a child aged 15 to 17 years transfusions but his parents ask for a transfusion, then the doctor can override the wishes of the child. In the United States, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that in the case of "imminent threats to the lives of children", doctors may in some cases "intervene in parental objections".
Hospital Liaison Committee
In 1988, the Watchtower Society established a Hospital Information Service, a department to help find doctors or surgical teams willing to perform medical procedures with the Witness without blood transfusion. The department is supervised by each of the branches of the Hospital Information Desk , and of the hundred Hospital Contact Licenses established throughout the United States. In 2003, about 200 hospitals around the world provided medical programs without blood. In 2006, there were 1,535 Hospital Liaison Practices around the world that coordinated communications between 110,000 doctors.
Hospital Information Services examines medical journals to find information on the availability and effectiveness of bloodless surgery methods. It disseminates information about treatment options to the local Hospital Liaison Committee, and to doctors and hospitals.
Patient Visit Group
Every year since 2004, Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States have been informed that "with your consent the law allows elders to know about your acceptance [to the hospital] and to give spiritual encouragement", but that "the elders serve at Patient Visit Groups have access to your name "only if the patient expresses their wishes in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
The Jehovah's Witnesses' branch office communicates directly to the hearing on "how to benefit from the activities of the Hospital Liaison Committee (HLC) and Patient Visiting Group (PVG)." A publication of Jehovah's Witnesses in 2000 reported that Argentina had fewer than a hundred HLC officials "provided important information to the medical community", adding that "their work is complemented by hundreds of other self-sacrificing parents who make up the Patient Visiting Group Calling Witnessing the patient to help and encourage them ". Each branch office appoints a PVG committee, which serves as a volunteer.
Acceptance between Jehovah's Witnesses
Since the discussion of blood doctrine to the point of forbidding transfusion, the majority of Jehovah's Witnesses have adopted an organizational position. Jehovah's Witnesses who accept the doctrine of blood usually hold firm to their beliefs. In the August 1998 edition of Academic Emergency Medicine, Donald Ridley, an attorney for Jehovah's Witnesses and staff of the organization, argued that carrying the latest Medical Directive card issued by the organization showed that a person personally agreed with the religious position of the Witnesses Established Jehovah.
In 1958, the Watchtower reported about a certain member of Jehovah's Witnesses who voluntarily accepted a blood transfusion, contrary to the doctrine of the Watchtower. The organization affirmed that members had received blood transfusions, although in 1961 the policy of communal excommunication for deliberate acceptance was made.
In 1982, a peer-reviewed case study of the Jehovah's Witnesses congregation was conducted by Drs. Larry J. Findley and Paul M. Redstone to evaluate individual beliefs related to blood among Jehovah's Witnesses. Research shows that 12% are willing to accept transfusion therapy that is prohibited by Jehovah's Witness doctrine. A study reviewed by colleagues examining medical records shows a similar percentage of Jehovah's Witnesses who are willing to accept blood transfusions for their children. Young adults also show a willingness to receive blood transfusions. In another study, patients of Jehovah's Witnesses presented for labor and delivery showed willingness to receive some form of blood or blood products. Of these patients, 10 percent received complete blood transfusions.
Watch Tower publications have noted that in religion, members' personal beliefs are often different from official doctrines. About Jehovah's Witnesses received the official position of the organization on blood, Drs Cynthia Gyamfi and the state of Richard Berkowitz, "It is naïve to assume that all people in any religious group have the same belief, regardless of doctrine.It is well known that Muslims , Judaism and Christianity have significant individual variations in their beliefs, and why not also apply to Jehovah's Witnesses? "
Ambivalence and denial of blood doctrine have been around since the 1940s. After the Watchtower institute established the doctrine, teaching that blood should not be eaten (circa 1927-31), Margaret Buber, who was never a member of the denomination, offered Jehovah's Witnesses direct reports in the Nazi RavensbrÃÆ'¼ck concentration camp. He recounts that the vast majority are willing to eat blood sausages despite having alternative meals to choose from, (the point is somewhat confusing, since prisoners have no choice, if they do not eat what is given to them, they are punished, so this reference from Buber seems untrustworthy } and in particular after considering the biblical assertion of blood. Excerpt taken from Book, The Nazi Holocaust. Section 6: Holocaust Victims, Volume 2, Page 648, paragraphs. About Jehovah's Witnesses and some Orthodox Jews. But their religious rigor sometimes proved dangerous; a small group of fundamentalists at Ravensbruck refused to eat blood sausage because of biblical orders and thereby increased the risk of malnutrition and hunger as well as corporal punishment.
History of doctrine
From 1931, when the name "Jehovah's Witnesses" was adopted, the publication of the Watchtower Society maintained the views of the founder of the Charles Taze Russell Society that the reference to abstain from eating blood in the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15: 19-29 was "suggestion" for given to Gentile converts. The publication of the Watchtower during the presidency of Joseph Franklin Rutherford praised the commercial and emergency use of blood. A 1925 edition of the Golden Age praised a man who had donated blood 45 times without payment. In 1927, the Watchtower noted, without elaboration, that in Genesis 9, God decreed that Noah and his descendants "should not eat blood, for life is in the blood". In 1940 the Consolation magazine reported to a woman who accidentally shot herself with a gun in her heart and survived a major surgical procedure in which the attending physician donated one liter of her own blood for transfusion.
In 1944, with the Watchtower Society under the reign of President Nathan Homer Knorr, the Watchtower insisted that the decisions contained in Genesis 9: 4 and Leviticus 17: 10-14 prohibit eating or drinking blood. in biblical times "either through transfusion or by mouth" and that this is applied "in a spiritual way to the purified people of the good will of today, otherwise known as 'Jonadabs' from the other 'sheep' of God."
In September 1945, representatives of the Watchtower Society in the Netherlands commented on blood transfusion in the Dutch edition of Consolation . Their comment translation into English reads:
When we lose our lives because we reject inoculation, it does not witness the justification of Jehovah's name. God has never issued a law prohibiting the use of drugs, inoculation or blood transfusion. This is the discovery of man, who, like the Pharisees, abandons the mercy and love of Jehovah.
According to sociologist Richard Singelenbreg, the statement that appears in the Dutch edition of Consolation may have been published without the knowledge of the doctrinal position published in the July 1945 edition of the Entertainment Conservancy by the Watch Tower Society in United States of America.
In 1945, the application of the doctrine on blood expanded to prohibit blood transfusion from whole blood, whether allogenic or autologous. The prohibition made no mention of any punitive action to accept the transfusion, but in January 1961 - in what was later described as applying "increased assertiveness" - he decided it was a violation decided to consciously attack blood transfusions. Watch Tower publications warn that accepting blood transfusions can prevent Witnesses from everlasting life in God's new world, a hope held by members: "This can lead to an immediate and very temporary extension of life, but it is at the expense of eternal life for a dedicated Christian."
In September 1956, Awake! states, "a particular blood fraction... is also under the prohibition of Scripture". A position against "various blood fractions" was repeated in September 1961. In November of the same year, the doctrine was modified to allow individual members to decide whether they could consciously accept the fraction used from blood for purposes such as vaccinations. This position has been expanded since; The previously formatted Pre-LEGAL Power of Attorney Form provided by the Watchtower Society includes an option for Jehovah's Witnesses to "accept all fractions of any major blood component."
In 1964, Jehovah's Witnesses were prohibited from getting transfusions for pets, from using fertilizers containing blood, and even suggested (if their conscience interfered with them) to write to dog food producers to verify that their products were blood-free. Later that year, it was stated that doctors or nurses who were Jehovah's Witnesses would not provide blood transfusions to dedicated fellow members. To provide transfusions to non-members, the Watchtower states that such a decision is "left to the conscience of the Christian physician himself."
In 1982, a Watchtower article stated that it would be wrong if a Witness allowed a leech to eat his blood as part of a medical procedure, because of the sanctity of blood.
In 1989 the Watchtower stated, "Every individual must decide" whether to accept hemodilatory procedures and autologous blood salvage (cell saver). In 1990, a brochure titled How to Save Your Blood? is released, outlining the general doctrine of Jehovah's Witnesses about blood.
In 2000, the Watchtower Society's tribunes on the blood fraction were clearly stated. The members are instructed to personally decide whether accepting a denomination will violate the doctrine of blood. In a later article, members are reminded that Jehovah's Witnesses donate blood or store their own blood before the operation.
In May 2001, the Watchtower Society improved its medical direction and identity card discussing the doctrine's position on blood; revised materials were distributed from 3 May 2001. This revised document specifies that "allogenic blood transfusions" are unacceptable whereas the previous document (dated 1999) states that "blood transfusion" is unacceptable. The 2001 document revised was active until December 20, 2001. The Watchtower Society subsequently canceled the revised document, stating, "After further review, it has been determined that cards dated" md-E 6/01 "and" ic-E 6/01 "are not may be used. Please destroy these items and make sure they are not distributed to the publisher. " Elders were instructed to return to the older edition of 1999 from medical directions and identity cards.
Watchtower Society publications often claim the negative consequences of blood transfusion:
Critical viewing
The opposition to the Watchtower's doctrine of blood transfusion comes from members and non-members. A group of dissident Witnesses known as Jehovah's Witnesses Related to Blood Reform (AJWRB) stated that there is no biblical basis for the prohibition of blood transfusion and seeks to have some policies changed. In a series of articles in the Journal of Medical Ethics US neurologist Osamu Muramoto, who is a medical advisor to AJWRB, has raised issues including what he claims is compulsion to resist transfusion, doctrinal inconsistencies, selective use of information by the Tower Institution Guards to exaggerate the dangers of transfusion and the use of outdated medical convictions.
Interpretation of the Bible
Disenchanted Witnesses say the use of Leviticus 17:12 by the Institute to support his opposition to blood transfusion contradicts his own teaching that Christians are not under the law of Moses. Theologian Anthony Hoekema claims that the blood forbidden in Levitical law is not human, but animal. He cites other authors who support his view that the direction in Acts 15 to distance themselves from blood is not intended as an eternal covenant but a means to maintain a peaceful relationship between Jew and Gentile Christians. He has been described as "absurd literalism" the use of scriptural prohibitions by Witnesses about eating blood to prohibit medical transfusion of human blood.
Coercion
Osamu Muramoto argues that the refusal by Jehovah's Witnesses of "saving lives" blood care creates serious bio-medical ethical issues. He has criticized the Watchtower Society's "controlling intervention" in what way he claims is information control and his policies punish members who receive blood transfusions or advocate the freedom to choose a blood-based treatment. He said the threats were classified as Witnesses that were separated and subsequently shunned by friends and relatives who became members forcing Jehovah's Witnesses to accept and obey the prohibition of blood transfusion. In one particular case involving the decision of the Russian district court, however, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found nothing in the assessment to suggest that any form of inappropriate pressure or undue influence be applied. He notes: "On the contrary, it seems that many Jehovah's Witnesses have made deliberate choices to refuse blood transfusions in advance, free of time constraints of emergency situations." The court said: "The freedom to accept or reject certain medical treatments, or to choose alternative forms of treatment, is essential to the principle of self-determination and personal autonomy.A competent adult patient is free to decide... does not have a blood transfusion. freedom is meaningful, the patient must have the right to make choices according to their own views and values, regardless of how irrational, unwise or unwise such choices can appear to others. "
Muramoto claimed that the Hospital Liaison Committee intervention could add to the "organizational pressures" imposed by family members, friends and members of the congregation on Witness patients to refuse blood-based treatment. He noted that while members of the HLC, who are church elders, "can provide patients with 'moral support', the effect of their presence on the patient is known to be extraordinary.The case report reveals that JW patients have changed their initial decision to receive blood treatment after visits from elders. "He claimed that such organizational pressures jeopardize the autonomy of the Witnesses' patients and disrupt their privacy and secrecy. He has advocated a policy in which the Watchtower organization and the counselor of the hearing will not question the patient about the details of their medical care and the patient will not disclose the information. He said the Society adopted such a policy in 1983 regarding details of sexual activity between married couples.
Watch Tower spokesperson Donald T. Ridley said that elders or members of HLC were not instructed or encouraged to investigate the Witnesses' health care decision and were not involved in the patient's hospitalization unless the patient asked for their help. However, Hour Watchtower representative David Malyon said that he would respond to the "sins" of the Witnesses he recognized by saying "Will you tell them or should I!" Nevertheless, Ridley said Muramoto's suggestion that the Witnesses should be free to ignore the teachings and standards of the Watchtower scriptures is absurd. He says loving God means obeying the commandments, not disobeying them and hiding one's disobedience from others.
Muramoto advises doctors to hold private meetings with patients to discuss their wishes, and that elders and family members are absent, allowing patients to feel free from church pressure. He advised physicians to question patients at (a) whether they had considered that the Watchtower Society might soon agree on some of the medical practices they currently find unpleasant, in the same way as before ignoring their opposition to vaccinations and organ transplants; (b) whether the Witness patient knows which blood components are allowed and which are prohibited, and whether they recognize that the decision is an organizational policy rather than a Bible teaching; and (c) do they realize that although some Bible verses forbid eating blood, eating and blood transfusions have an entirely different effect on the body. British HLC Representative David Malyon has responded that Muramoto's suggested questions are an insult to force Jehovah's Witnesses with "complicated philosophical solutions" and, if used by doctors, would be "a cruel transformation of the medical role of aid and care into that of a devil's advocate and a con man ".
Selective use of information
Muramoto has claimed many of the Watchtower publications using redundant and emotionalism to emphasize the dangers of transfusion and the benefits of alternative treatments, but presents distorted images by not reporting the benefits of blood-based treatment. The publication also does not recognize that in some situations, including rapid and massive bleeding, there is no alternative to blood transfusion. He claims the publication of the Watch Tower Society often discusses the risk of death as a result of rejecting blood transfusions, but gives little consideration to prolonged suffering and disability, resulting in an additional burden on families and communities, which can result from rejection. Lawyers and former Witness Kerry Louderback-Wood also claimed that Witness publications exaggerate the medical risks of blood-taking and the efficiency of non-blood medical therapy in critical situations.
Douglas E. Cowan, an academic in the sociology of religion, claims that members of the counter-Christian movement who criticized the Watchtower Society, made the use of information selectively. For example, Christian apologist Richard Abanes writes that their prohibition for blood transfusion, "has caused many deaths of Witnesses over the years, including many children." Cowan writes: "When the reader carefully examines [Abanes's footnote], however, searching for perhaps some substance statistics, he only finds a statistical guess based on the 1980 Red Cross blood usage numbers." Cowan also said Abanes eliminates "critical issues" in an attempt to "present the most negative face possible." Cowan writes that "the reader is left with the impression that the Watchtower Society consciously leads a large number of preventable deaths each year."
Outdated medical convictions
Osamu Muramoto said the Watchtower Society relies on centuries-old medical beliefs to support his assertion that blood transfusions are the same as eating blood. The 1990 Watchtower brochure on blood quotes the seventeenth-century anatomist to support his view. Muramoto said the view that blood is food - still supported in the Watchtower publications - was abandoned by modern medicine decades ago. He has criticized an analogy commonly used by the Society in which he states: "Consider a man who was told by a doctor that he should abstain from alcohol, would he obey if he stopped drinking alcohol but was it directly inserted into his veins?" Muramoto said the analogy is wrong, explains: "Oral ingested alcohol is absorbed as alcohol and is circulated as it is in the blood, whereas the blood consumed is orally digested and does not enter the circulation as blood The blood that is inserted directly into the blood vessels circulates and functions as blood, not as nutrition.Therefore, blood transfusion is a form of cellular organ transplantation... And transplant organs are now permitted by WTS. "He said the objection to blood transfusion on the basis of a biblical ban on blood-eating is similar to the rejection of a top heart transplant the basis that a doctor warned a patient not to eat meat because of high cholesterol levels.
David Malyon, chairman of the UK Hospital Liaison Committee in Luton, UK, has claimed that Muramoto's discussion of the difference between consuming blood and alcohol is long-winded and says the law of blood in the Bible is based on respect for life and its relation to blood, and that the law must kept in the same spirit as in the letter.
Inconsistencies
Muramoto has been described as a strange and inconsistent Watchtower policy on the acceptance of all individual components of blood plasma as long as they are not taken at the same time. He said that the Institute offers no biblical explanation to distinguish between prohibited treatment and which is considered a "matter of conscience", explaining the difference based entirely on the arbitrary decisions of the Governing Body, which the Witness must strictly adhere to on their premise is the " truth". She questioned why white blood cells (1 percent of blood volume) and platelets (0.17 percent) were banned, but albumin (2.2 percent of blood volume) was allowed. He has questioned why donating blood and storing blood for autologous transfusion is considered wrong, but the Watchtower Society allows the use of the blood components that must be donated and stored before the Witnesses use them. He questioned why the Witnesses, though seeing blood as sacred and symbolizing life, were ready to let a person die by placing more importance on symbols than the facts he symbolized.
Kerry Louderback-Wood alleges that by labeling the fraction of blood received today as "minutes" in relation to whole blood, the Watchtower organization causes followers to misunderstand the scope and to what extent the fraction is allowed.
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