WTS Leaders - Mass Killers

by Lee Elder 15 Replies latest jw friends

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  Marvin Shilmer

  I'd just like to see some hard numbers. As far as I know they haven't been produced yet.

  Hello, Pork Chop

  Again,

  "100% of JWs die that suffer a medical condition that will cause death absent forbidden infusions of blood or certain blood parts, if Watchtower policy is adhered to."

  Unless you find some flaw in the statement above, the 100% figure is a hard one. If that is not enough try the 1994 Awake magazine. It says,

  "In former times thousands of youths died for putting God first. They are still doing it, only today the drama is played out in hospitals and courtrooms, with blood transfusions the issue."
• 

  Pork Chop

  Your 'statement' is meaningless. Put some definition to it.

  Once again you try to use rhetoric to obscure the fact that you can't produce real numbers. I get real bored with assertions.
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  Marvin Shilmer

  Your 'statement' is meaningless. Put some definition to it.

  Hi again, Pork Chop

  I doubt the parents of 14-year-old Adrian Yeatts[1] would agree with your sentiment. Adrian’s life was not meaningless. On the other hand, his untimely demise provided deathly meaning to the Watchtower’s policy on partial blood abstention. The same can be said for:

  12-year-old Lenae Martinez[1]

  17-year-old Crystal Moore[1]

  12-year-old Lisa Kosack[1]

  17-year-old Ernestine Gregory[1]

  As for my own statement, its meaning is sure: following Watchtower policy leads to death when it prohibits lifesaving medical therapy. Do you disagree with this clear meaning?

  From Dr. Kaaron Benson’s report in Cancer Control Journal[2]:

  "Of the nine patients reviewed at our center who had indications for blood transfusion and refused blood, one died of anemia and thrombocytopenia, and one had a cerebrovascular accident. Of the 58 oncology patients studied, 10 had limited treatments due to their refusal of blood and presumably suffered long­term adverse consequences due to that restricted therapy."

  Both anemia and thrombocytopenia are correctable with blood transfusion.

  So, in Dr. Benson’s retrospective review 1 of 9 patients died (11%) as a direct result of refusing blood therapy. Furthermore, 10 of the 58 patients had limited treatment for their cancer due to the same reason. I would say "limited" treatment for cancer has strong meaning for those suffering it.

  ----
  [1] Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Youths Who Have "Power Beyond What Is Normal", Awake May 22, 1994

  [2] Kaaron Benson, Management of the Jehovah's Witness Oncology Patient: Perspective of the Transfusion Service, Cancer Control Journal Volume 2 Number 6 November/December 1995
• 

  Cygnus

  Pork,

  Here's a site that briefly discusses the JW mortality rate due to intraoperative anemia and blood loss based upon a study conducted from 1983 to 1990.

  http://www.medana.unibas.ch/eng/educ/blood.htm

  That study is significant because it is cited in the 10/15/93 Watchtower, where a Dr. Kitchens is quoted from an article he authored stating the JW mortality rate appears to increase by .5% to 1.5% for refusing blood/red cells. The doctor cautions against the liberal use of blood in his article, however, saying the risks of blood transfusion may outweigh the benefits (although no specific numbers or estimates are given in the WT article).

  I forget the exact calculations, but either Dave Reed or Lee Elder once figured that if you take that study average, 1% greater mortality rate, that means that for every hundred patients that require blood, an extra one dies. In the USA, 26 million units of blood are transfused in an average year. In the UK, it is about 2 million units. Canada, about 1 million. Figure 35 million where most Witnesses live and get surgery. Calculating the number of persons transfused based upon a number of units each, and figuring that an extra 1/100 does not survive due to anemia or low hemocrit levels, then some have guesstimated that over 1,000 JWs per year die. Some say that this figure might even be higher, since the above study only refers to anemic patients in a controlled setting with low hemocrit levels. It does not refer to trauma situations, or the various other uses of blood which JWs are to abstain from which results in or contributes to either sickness or death.

  My own opinion is that the numbers of JWs having died to the blood policy over the years was probably rather significant twenty years ago, but not today. The WTS has done a good job educating doctors as to their wishes, and the internet alone is full of critical sites saying how overrated and even unnecessary most blood transfusions are today. I would say that maybe perhaps 100 Witnesses die each year. I simply don't see that many news reports of Witnesses dying from lack of blood, and one would think that if the figure were in the 1000s, we would see it all the time. You know Kent would advertise them. In my local area, I only know of one person who died from refusing blood, in 1990, a JW woman who bled to death during childbirth.
• 

  Pathofthorns

  I think it is an awareness at the top that a scripturally viable alternative exists to their policy and they deliberately have chosen not to make this alternative known and available to their members.

  This awareness and decision to hold the course, knowing full well they are denying people potentially life-saving products is what makes this tantamount to murder.

  Given the huge number of 6 million members, I think the 900 figure that dies annually due to their policy is entirely reasonable and conservative. Included are those who refuse permissible components, simply because they cannot understand the present policy of what is allowed and what is forbidden.

  Thanks for keeping the topic in the forefront LE. More people need to press this issue.

  Path
• 

  Marvin Shilmer

  Greetings, Pork Chop,

  You don’t have to look far to find this stuff. Following is a link to a news story about a medical retrospective review of 332 Jehovah's Witnesses who gave birth at Mount Sinai Medical Center (NY) from January 1988 through December 1999.

  According to the article, 2 of the 332 JW women died from obstetric hemorrhage, corresponding to a rate of 521 deaths per 100,000 live births--a maternal death rate nearly 44 times higher than that among the general US population.

  http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011108/hl/childbirth_1.html

  Hi, Path,

  I agree wholeheartedly. It is criminal to deliberately keep viable alternate scriptural views from the rank and file JW by not writing about them openly in the same journals they use to indoctrinate the masses with.

  Hello, Cygnus,

  JW deaths from adhering to the party line rarely make news beyond the local paper, if there. Also, hidden in the numbers are the JWs whose deaths were attributed to auto crashes, cancer, et all, when the real culprit was following an indoctrinated partial blood abstention. This really hits home when you are a congregation elder asked to comfort grieving parents or children knowing perfectly well that Brooklyn Bethel avoids answering tough and telling questions about their absurd doctrine. It leads to outrage, and action!

  Unfortunately JWs are such a statistical "flea," and the Watchtower has done a pretty good job marketing themselves as decent, that crusaders do not embrace the fine fight of uncovering the partial blood abstention policy for what it is, a murderous act of organizational self-preservationism.