Tijkmo: My wife and mother of my children very nearly died as this young JW mother did.
TRAGEDY ; YOUNG JW MOTHER DIES AFTER GIVING BIRTH
by stay young and beautiful 58 Replies latest jw friends
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tijkmo
Tijkmo: My wife and mother of my children very nearly died as this young JW mother did.
my question is purely a technical one..(not an emotional one) however nearly dying is not the same as dying. are you saying that your wife is a jw and so she refused a transfusion as this young jw did...in which case it could be argued that not having blood saved her. or is she not a jw and had blood as you are arguing this jw mother should have and therefore blood would have saved her at it did your wife. see - my mother hemorrhaged at 2 of her births..one she was a jw and one she wasn't, ergo one she had blood and one she didn't. i'm still not convinced that blood saves any better than good medicine and blind luck. i get that the wt has frequently 'updated' its viewpoint which is one of the reasons why many on this board are no longer jws so that means we are not bound by their rules. so again i repeat - why do we care.. even if they changed their stance on blood we are not going back are we.
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Gilberto
my question is purely a technical one..(not an emotional one)
so again i repeat - why do we care..
?
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M.J.
"i'm still not convinced that blood saves any better than good medicine and blind luck."
Go down to the hospital and ask how many lives are saved per month due to blood transfusions. Sure some are given prematurely or unnecessarily but not all.
You can find the statistics on how many people's lives are saved through papers done on the subject, many of which have been posted here.
It's a simple matter of:
1. patient loses oxygen carrier. No oxygen to brain. Patient dies.
or
2. Patient loses oxygen carrier. Doctors replenish oxygen carrier. Patient lives.
It's not complicated.
as for your question...Whatever. -
Abaddon
tijkmo
how is this different from non jws who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for other causes they believe in...like their families or their country
Sometimes those (non-JW) people make an informed choice giving their life up. Because a JW is in a high control group, they cannot be said to have informed choice.
and if we choose to believe evolution then surely someone dying young only serves to reinforce the concept that he/she wasn't fit to survive.
If she were making a free choice then, yes, the level of stupid in the gene pool would decrease. But she was not making a free choice so she is not involved in anyform of selection, natural or otherwise.
Why do we care? Because we have compassion, for her, for the peope in Darfur, for Indian kids working in sweatshops making GAP clothes. We can imagine what it might be like to be in their shoes and wish they weren't either.
i'm still not convinced that blood saves any better than good medicine and blind luck.
Well, it would seem your medical knowledge is at the same level as your knowledge of evolutionary biology, so you not being convinced about it means nothing for a given value of nothing. It's like a carpenter saying he's not convinced about the value of GPS in marine navigation.
You're asking questions that have really obvious ommisions of reasoning or answers. Either you don't realise this or you're building up to making some hopefully clever point by being delibertely obtuse and emotive. If you really think you're not being emotive you need to think about the reaction your pattern of questions will cause; it's an emotive reaction. You see I don't think you're as dumb as you're making out... what's your point?
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greendawn
They do not follow the Bible in fact they follow the WTS and more specifically its erroneous and distorted opinions of what the Bible says. Only total morons would take seriously what they have to say especially in matters of life and death, as on the blood transfusion issue, given their abysmal record of erroneous interpretations over the past 120 years.
The question is: did they ever get anything right? Why does everything they formulate eventually become old light? -
skeeter1
This news story appears to be sweeping England. Below is a GREAT article on the JWs. Really gives the public some "new light" about this group.
http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article3132440.ece
The Big Question: Who are the Jehovah's Witnesses, and why do they refuse blood transfusions?
By Paul Vallely, Associate editor
Published: 06 November 2007
Why ask now?
Because Emma Gough, a 22-year-old mother has just died in a Shrewsbury hospital hours after giving birth to twins. She was a Jehovah's Witness (JW) and had refused a blood transfusion. There are 130,000 JWs in the UK, and almost seven million worldwide. Their numbers have almost doubled in 20 years.
Believers – who include the tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, model Naomi Campbell, and singers Prince and Michael Jackson – routinely sign forms before hospital treatment insisting on no transfusions. They say the Bible forbids them.
What exactly do they believe?
Jehovah's Witnesses are an off-shoot of Adventist Christians, who think the world is about to end. They began in 19th century America when a Protestant farmer named William Miller predicted the second coming of Christ would happen on 22 October 1844. When it didn't – a non-event which became known as The Great Disappointment – the Millerites fragmented into various factions, including the Seventh Day Adventists. The JWs grew from this culture. (In 1966 they said the world would, probably, end in 1975, which set back the movement's growth for three years, but it recovered.)
The JWs are biblical literalists. If they can't find an idea in the Bible they insist it's wrong. So they reject standard Christian doctrines like the idea that Jesus was God, that he died on a cross, that he was physically resurrected, that souls live after death, that Hell exists etc. Ideas they do find in the Bible lead them to reject gambling, masturbation, abortion, homosexuality and excessive public displays of affection.
So what is with all the knocking on front doors?
The movement was founded by a a chap called Charles Taze Russell in 1879. he called his followers "Bible Students". An emphasis on house-to-house preaching began in 1922 and they changed their name to the Jehovah's Witnesses (after Isaiah 43:10) in 1931.
The idea is that JWs are "in the world but not of it". So they live and work among the general community, and send their children to state schools, but every member spends at least 70 hours a month on door-to-door missionary activity. They have no professional clergy; all baptised members are considered ordained ministers.
In 2005 Jehovah's Witnesses around the world spent over 1.2 billion hours on missionary work, handing out their magazine, Watchtower. Published in 161 languages it has an average print run of 27 million, making it the largest circulation magazine in the world.
So why are they such figures of fun?
No one likes having their evening's telly interrupted. But it's more than that. Their publicly-flaunted separatism irks or angers others. They don't fit in. They refuse to celebrate Christmas. They don't vote at elections. They decline to salute flags or sing nationalist songs. In the First World War in Britain, Canada and the USA they refused to fight and their American leaders got 20 year sentences for treason. In Nazi Germany they refused to say Heil Hitler and denounced the swastika as idolatrous. Half of them were sent to concentration camps where their purple triangle badges indicated they could be released if they recanted their religion. Few did. Half of them died there. In the US, three quarters of all conscientious objectors were JWs. In Britain they were tarred and feathered. So it goes on. Today they are persecuted in Russia, Uzbekistan, Belarus, and Cuba.
Why don't other religions stick up for them?
Because they have gone out of their way to be rude about them. They have their own, rather eccentric, translation of the Bible and rubbish everyone else's beliefs as "mere human speculations or religious creeds". They have routinely described the Roman Catholic Church as a "semiclad harlot reeling drunkenly into fire and brimstone". Then there are "the so-called Protestants" and the "Yiddish" clergy "like foolish simpletons" participating in "the world empire of false religion". I could go on. They do. They are not exactly big on inter-faith.
What's the situation with child abuse?
Not good. They take Deuteronomy 19:15 literally, which demands two witnesses to a crime (not easy in cases of abuse). And they cite 1 Corinthians 6:1-11 – "Does anyone of you that has a case against the other dare to go to court before unrighteous men, and not before the holy ones?" – to justify trying to deal with criminals with courts of elders rather than courts of law. A Panorama investigation reported they have an internal list of 23,720 reported abusers which they keep private. Studies in the US suggest they have proportionally four times more sexual assaults on children than the Catholic Church.
So where does blood fit in?
They cite four biblical texts (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:12-14, Acts 15:29 and Acts 21:25). They say these mean that blood, the life-force, belongs to God and is not there for human use. They believe it a sin to eat not just black pudding but also to eat the flesh of animals that have not been properly bled.
And they extend the ban to transfusions. They won't even allow someone's blood to be stored before an operation and then used after it to replace their own blood loss. Blood is not to be stored; it is to be poured out and returned to God. Some JWs even reject dialysis or cell salvage on these grounds. Some will not accept red cells, white cells, platelets or plasma, but accept "fractions" made from these components.
There is a philosophical problem here. When a substance is broken down into components does the original remain? Some 90-96 per cent of blood plasma consists of water. The remainder is albumin, globulins, fibrinogen and coagulation factors. JWs say these may be used, according to conscience, but only if taken separately. Opponents say is like outlawing a ham and cheese sandwich but allowing the eating of bread, ham and cheese separately.
They are criticised for other inconsistencies. Blood fraction products are only available because of blood donation – a practice JWs condemned as unethical.
But didn't they change their policy a few years back?
No. In 2000 the church council announced that it would no longer expel members who had willingly had a blood transfusion. But only because by doing so they had excommunicated themselves.
Many JWs still carry a signed and witnessed advance directive card absolutely refusing blood in the event of an accident. And the church's website still carries alarmist material about the dangers of transfusions in transmitting Aids, Lyme Disease and other conditions. It also exaggerates the effectiveness of alternative non-blood medical therapies.
What do doctors think?
The British Association of Anaesthetists guidelines insist that the wishes of the patient must normally be paramount. US doctors take a similar view; they know giving blood to someone who does not want it could get them sued – one of the busiest trauma hospitals in Florida even has a blanket policy of refusing to treat JWs.
Other countries, like France, take a more dirigiste view. And a landmark case in Dublin recently ruled that doctors were right to give a woman blood during childbirth because the right of her child to have a mother over-ruled her own right to refuse the blood.
There are even more subtle dilemmas to come. One asks whether doctors are obliged to give chemotherapy, which is normally accompanied by a blood transfusion, to patients who insist on having it without the blood, without which it is highly likely to fail. As medicine advances things are likely to get more, rather than less, tricky.
Interesting? Click here to explore further
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jaguarbass
My wife almost died after having my son. She hemoraghed, Her blood count went down to 3.
We were brainwashed to sacrafice her on the alter of Jehober. But somehow she survived.
I cant immagine how much hate and anger I would have had, if she died.
Because I am pretty full of hate and anger now.
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flipper
All I have to say about this is any mind control cult like the witnesses or anybody that would require a young mother to die and leave small babies ? Can anyone deny that if the devil is real, , then Jehovah's Witnesses are controlled by him! No loving God would look upon this kind of sick twisted perversion with approval ! Did you hear me all you JW apologists ? Die cult Die ! The sooner the better ! Peace out, Mr. Flipper .
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Fleur
This was posted as a comment to the article about Emma on the Sun website.
I don't know the forum policy anymore about posting things from other sites, but this is buried in some 10+ pages of comments over there, and I felt that it was just too amazingly written to miss. So mods, apologies if this needs deletion, I mean no offense.
The comment writer writes:
I am a Jehovah’s Witness. My religion let me down. I have seen too many young mothers die refusing blood. My religion keeps telling me this is God’s will. My heart keeps telling me this is unloving. My religion keeps telling me the Bible says to do this. My mind can’t find this in the Bible. My religion keeps telling me we are protected from disease because we refuse blood. But we die just the same, because we refuse blood. My religion fights in the courts for freedom to teach as it wants to teach. But my religion represses me from openly expressing my outrage at its blood prohibition with its weapon of organized communal and family shunning. My religion tells the world Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse blood transfusion out of sincerely held belief. The reality is my religion enforces social ostracizing of any Jehovah’s Witness who dares to accept blood in good conscience. My religion tells the world that it represents all Jehovah’s Witnesses in relation to blood transfusion issues. My religion represses me from sharing my actual belief. My religion tells doctors that Jehovah’s Witnesses each decide for themselves. The reality is Jehovah’s Witnesses are all monitored by other (medical staff) Jehovah’s Witnesses who are indoctrinated to breach medical ethical laws to report if and when a fellow Jehovah’s Witness accepts blood. So how is the medical world to know my belief? If I want to retain normal family relationships with my husband and grown children (who are Jehovah’s Witnesses) then I am coerced to refuse blood transfusion at increased risk of death. My choice is to either accept an increased risk of premature death or to accept risk of losing my family relationships. I love my family, so I am coerced to accept increased risk of death by refusing blood when it is deemed necessary to prevent death and/or morbidity. My religion has betrayed me, and lied to the public. I am trapped.
Now there, someone is telling the truth about "The Truth".
:(
essie