The letter I promised earlier from the Society on Blood (page 2)

The letter speaks of an opposer who offers “specious reasoning”. I understand this is referring to a not-so-long-ago law school graduate. But, of course, it would not do for Watchtower to name the individual in its letter. Watchtower's accusation is a quaint nuance in a letter laced with specious reasoning.

By the way, Fred Rusk composed Watchtower’s letter.

Marvin Shilmer

bohm

okay since noone else disect this letter i will try to note something:

From the letter: "in weighting matters, scriptually the slave has desided with good basis that bloods four primary components plasma, red cells, white cells and platelets should be used. that is how unfractionated blood components settle out naturally.

It seem that their criteria is that the allowed blood fractions can be mechanically fractioned from whole blood.

TD

Thank you ldrnomo and Marvin

I've read the repy through several times. Their argument pivots on the idea that, "...blood, as long as it could represent the life of the creature should not be used for any purpose."

Does that accurately describe the position of Jehovah's Witnesses? A fundamental problem with resorting to deceit is consistency. Sooner or later a liar always gets tripped up by his own lies. This is apparent from even a brief survey of the literature of Jehovah's Witnesses.

For example, the March 1, 1989 issue of The Watchtower explicitly described intraoperative autotransfusion explicitly as an "autologous blood use."

"A final example of autologous blood use involves recovering and reusing blood during surgery. Equipment is used to aspirate blood from the wound, pump it out through a filter (to remove clots or debris) or a centrifuge (to eliminate fluids), and then direct it back into the patient. " (Emphasis mine)

The previous two examples of "autologous blood use" in the captioned article were isovolemic hemodilution and predonation. So here we had three autologous uses of blood, two of which were matters of conscience and one of which was not. Clearly some uses of blood are distinguishable from others. This is apparent in other areas as well. The August 8, 1993 issue of Awake! explicitly acknowledges that allogenic blood is used in the production of the hepatitis B vaccine:

"These active immunizations include all the baby shots and the injections that are commonly considered as vaccinations. With one exception (discussed later), these do not involve the use of blood in any step of production?..One other active immunization deserves attention because it is the only active immunization made from blood. It is a hepatitis-B vaccine called Heptavax-B." (Emphasis mine)

The October 1, 1994 issue of The Watchtower amplifies on the subject of "baby shots" by acknowledging that blood products are indeed used in their production:

"Many find this noteworthy, since some vaccines that are not prepared from blood may contain a relatively small amount of plasma albumin that was used or added to stabilize the ingredients in the preparation."

Examples would include MMR II, MUMPSVAX, ATTENUVAX and MURAVAX II by Merck & Co. The growth mediums for these vaccines (e.g. Medium 199, MEM, etc) typically contain both human albumin and fetal bovine serum. Additionally the vaccines themselves contain human albumin as an adjuvant or excipient. Other examples of this include VARIVAX and VAQTA, also by Merck & Co., EOLARIX, INFANRIX, and GLAXO by SmithKline Beecham, PENTACEL by Aventis Pasteur, and Connaught Laboratories IPV just to name a few. The acceptance of some of these vaccines is virtually unavoidable in modern society.

Regardless of whether the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses officially endorses or otherwise approves of any of these uses of blood or not, if they do recognize that some uses of blood can in fact be distinguished from others, then it is clear that their prohibition against blood does not unconditionally include all uses, it conditionally excludes some uses and not others. In other words, it's not a question about the use of blood, it's a question about the misuse of blood.

Invoking an unconditional argument in defense of what they themselves have explicitly acknowledged to be a conditional prohibition exposes the inherent deceit of Watchtower writers. What purpose does this serve? A conditional prohibition by its very nature requires a set of conditions whereby various uses of blood may be distinguished from each other while an unconditional prohibition does not. And herein is the problem. Despite 60 years of trying, Watchtower writers have never been able to demonstrate that transfusion medicine is either a physical or a moral equivalent to eating blood. That has become a discussion that must be avoided at all costs and this in turn has reduced them to hiding behind the notion that all uses of blood are forbidden when their own literature clearly contradicts this idea.

AiAi

I have written letters before to the society but never recieved a response, and i dont have money for certified mail :/

It could be because of how the letter was written and what was said but I still have a slight suspicion I didnt mail it to the right address...so does anybody know which address one should mail letters to if they want a response?

wannabefree

AiAi - you won't necessarily get a response, and if you do, it can take months.

Send it:

Watchtower Bible & Tract Society

Attn: Writing Committee

25 Columbia Heights

Brooklyn, NY 11201-2483

The letter I promised earlier from the Society on Blood

Marvin Shilmer

pirata

bohm

LUKEWARM

skeeter1

Marvin Shilmer

bohm

TD

AiAi

wannabefree

Share this