djeggnog:
You are really just repeating yourself, @TD. You wrote that "analogies with simple compounds like ... penicillin fail," but because I didn't understand your point, I said, "What do you mean?" I wasn't asking you whether Penicillin is a simple compound. What I was asking you with this question is to tell me how my analogy failed.
Sorry for misunderstanding you. Since I've already explained the physical difference upon which we hang the moral distinction between cannibalism and tissue transplant, I think I would have been repeating myself either way though:
Penicillin enters the blood stream unchanged regardless of the method of egress into the body.
That doesn't happen with blood. When blood is consumed, it is digested, broken down and used by the body as food. When blood is transfused it retains its form and continues to function as blood.
If this distinction applies to all other tissue transplant scenarios, why would it not also apply to transfusion especially given the fact that blood is forbidden as food?
I asked:
Do you disagree that in-vitro fertilization for a married couple unable to conceive by normal means is a use of the human reproductive system in accordance with its purpose?
No, I do not disagree, but I disagreed with what you actually said:
Okay. If we both agree that it makes a big difference whether or not the sperm donor and egg donor are husband and wife vis a vis in-vitro fertilzation, how do we arrive at that conclusion? Isn't it because the attendent circumstances have huge impact on the morality of the procedure?
Your fellow Jehovah's Witnesses don't seem to have any problem at all with this distinction even when blood is the subject. Note what Rolf Furuli said:
"In the New Testament (Acts 15:29) there are four things which are governed by the one verb «to abstain from», namely: ‘things sacrificed to idols’, ‘blood’, ‘things strangled’, and ‘fornication’. The first three are nominal phrases and the last is an action, so an important question is: Does the prohibition focus on each thing per se, indicating that there is some kind of taboo connected with each thing.? Or is the focus on particular actions, where the things are just ‘tokens’ by the help of which the wrong actions are done?
To illustrate the point I will use ‘things sacrificed to idols’ and a situation from the first century which was not uncommon, as an example. Emperor Nero has arrested a family of father, mother and child, and they are led before a great crowd of people in the theatre. In the middle of the theatre is an altar with a burning fire, and beside the fire is a censer with incense. The ultimatum to the father is: «Go to the altar and put some incense on the fire, thus sacrificing to the genius of the emperor, and your whole family will be released. If not, all of you will be killed.» Shall the father compromise his faith in order to save the life of himself and his family, including his child? Many Christians refused to do just that and were consequently killed.
Can we differentiate between action and matter in this situation? Yes! There was nothing particular with fire or incense as such - the family could in their home light a fire to cook their meal and even put some incense on that fire because they liked the fragrance, but in the situation in the theatre the act of putting incence on the fire represented something special, namely, a sacrifice to a god different from their own. It was what the action of putting incense on the altar represented which was the issue, and not the substance matter (incence) by which the action was accomplished.
....To ascertain that the matter of which blood consists is not the focus, we can use ‘things strangled’ as an example. To abstain from this is logical because the animal has not been bled, so the blood is still in the meat. However, even when an animal is bled, a part of the blood is still in the meat, so why can a Christian eat ‘some blood’ (which is found in the meat of the bled animal) but not ‘much blood’ (which is found in the strangled animal)? The answer is that it is not blood as a fluid that is the issue, but obedience toward God. When an animal is bled, its life, represented by the blood - God’s property - is given back to God. This is not done when an animal is strangled. (emphasis mine)
He went on to argue that transfusion is a moral equivalent to eating blood, which is a very different argument than asserting that transfusion is physically the same as consumption.
You haven't proved that anything about my reasoning here about penicillin being consumed whether taken orally or intravenously to be deceiving or misleading, @TD. You can't, so you want to conflate your arguments and introduce a new one about polyheme having "the potential to do a lot of good for Jehovah's Witnesses" and being "physically and morally distinguishable from consuming human hemoglobin as a food."
I'm not trying to conflate the argument, I'm trying to find consistency and common ground. You've argued on this thread that God's law against eating blood is violated regardless of whether blood is consumed orally or administered as a transfusion. The thought I take away from this is that the method of egress into the human body makes no difference.
But given the fact that one of Jehovah's Witnesses would never eat a food if hemoglobin has been deliberately added to it, but they might as a matter of personal decision accept an intravenous preparation of hemoglobin, (And this can be confirmed with a phone call if the August 6, 2006 Awake! is not clear enough) it seems to me that the method of egress into the body does indeed make a difference.
Humor a poor stupid unbelieving Jewish spouse of a JW here. Why would the method of egress be important with hemoglobin, but not important with more substantial blood components?
You came to learn all of this from "the information desk at Patterson"? Give me a break!
I've tried to be open and upfront about how this issue was thrust upon me and what I was doing for a living at the time. SQL had 26 in-house MDs when I was there and several were willing to discuss the clinical aspects of transfusion with me. Additionally a JW friend and coworker was having a crises of conscience and thinking of changing his occupation because we handled blood on a massive scale everyday. He wrote to your parent organization seeking guidance and ended up exchanging several letters which he let me see. Those letters don't directly bear on this discussion, but they do contribute substantially to the overall picture.
