Misleading insertion in 2-22-02 Awake.

by Belligerent Paladin 25 Replies latest jw friends

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  Belligerent Paladin

  Misleading insertion.

  In the 2-22-02 Awake magazine with the cover title “How Safe are you at Work?” has an interesting article under Watching the world.

  Blood Transfusion Dangers
  “One in three transfusions were being administered when, under [New South Wales] Health guidelines, they should not have been,” reports Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald. “The guidelines call for a blood transfusion if the patient’s haemoglobin level is seven or below.” Dr. Ross Wilson, who conducted the study on blood use, explained that “giving an unnecessary transfusion could kill a patient by inducing heart failure.” According to a study that Dr. Wilson conducted six years earlier, “about 18,000 [Australians] a year died as a result of complications they developed directly as a result of the medical treatment they received.” Dr. Wilson recommends that doctors be reminded of the blood transfusion health guidelines each time they request a transfusion and also that patients be informed about the guidelines so they can question their physician directly.

  This is a classical example of how the Watchtower organization misquotes information with the intention to deceive. At first glance, a person could easily get the wrong impressions.

  First of all, the title is misleading. Dr. Wilson was not talking about the dangers of blood transfusions, but rather the following of guidelines for when a blood transfusion should be administered. The title leads the individual, especially if the individual is a dedicated JW, to the mind-set that Dr. Wilson’s main thrust is the dangers involved in blood transfusions.

  Secondly, it is very misleading to put in the quote, “about 18,000 [Australians] a year died as a result of complications they developed directly as a result of the medical treatment they received.” in the paragraph. This has nothing to do with blood transfusions. “Medical treatment” is a very broad term. To put it in this brief snippet entitled “Blood Transfusion Dangers” in my mind is nothing short of intentional deception to further vilify and reinforce the current paranoia of blood transfusions in the Witness’ doctrines.

  Since it cannot find doctors to support its crackpot medicine, the Organization continues to stay true to its form and take quotations out of context to further its own ends.

  -The Belligerent Paladin
• 

  Scully

  Belligerent Paladin writes:

  “One in three transfusions were being administered when, under [New South Wales] Health guidelines, they should not have been,” reports Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald. “The guidelines call for a blood transfusion if the patient’s haemoglobin level is seven or below.” Dr. Ross Wilson, who conducted the study on blood use, explained that “giving an unnecessary transfusion could kill a patient by inducing heart failure.”

  There are more "guidelines" than just the one cited. For example, a person who suffers a massive loss in their blood volume will have a haemoglobin level that registers as "normal" because there has been nothing administered to dilute the concentration of blood. Also, if a patient receives intravenous fluids, their haemoglobin concentration will fall because the extra fluids will dilute their blood. Physicians are the ones who are trained to make that determination, based on ALL the FACTS of a patient's case.

  The line about "heart failure" is misleading. To the lay person it sounds as though the patient goes into cardiac arrest immediately when circulatory volume increases. That is not the case. The body is amazingly adaptive and will compensate for small shifts in fluid balance. What is being referred to, in my professional opinion, is what is called "congestive heart failure" which involves a fluid volume that is greater than the heart's capacity to circulate it, resulting in a "backlog" of fluid. The condition is highly treatable and reversible with medications like diuretics and digoxin.

  Leave it to the not-so-brilliant minds of the idiots at the helm of the WTS to increase their followers' paranoia about the medical profession yet another notch.

  Love, Scully RN

  
  
• 

  seedy3

  Ok lets do some Jdub math here, this is gonna be good.
  

  “One in three transfusions were being administered when, under [New South Wales] Health guidelines, they should not have been,”

  And
  

  “about 18,000 [Australians] a year died as a result of complications they developed directly as a result of the medical treatment they received.”

  So if we read this the way the WTS wants us to the math would be like this.

  1 in 3 die from blood transfusion

  and that number is 18,000 a year

  So that means that in Australia every year there are about 54,000 blood transfusions every year. Man that's a lot of blood!

  What a bunch of dopes

  Seedy
• 

  Sam Beli

  Seedy, you said: "So that means that in Australia every year there are about 54,000 blood transfusions every year. Man that's a lot of blood!"

  Actually, the figure is much higher than that. Nearly a million donations of blood are made each year in Australia.

  You can get the Red Cross report on this subject here: http://www.giveblood.redcross.org.au/pdf/arcbsar.pdf

  This report contains lots of information on their blood drives down under.
• 

  ozziepost

  I've a fair idea who would have submitted that Sydney Morning Herald gem to the Writing Department from the Bethel of Oz and so I'm not surprised about the seeming misrepresentation. The guy has blinkers on when it comes to the WTS. Certainly not a lateral thinker... or should that be literal thinker?

  Cheers,
  Ozzie

  "If our hopes for peace are placed in the hands of imperfect people, they are bound to evaporate."

  
  - Ron Hutchcraft Surviving the Storms of Stress
• 

  DazedAndConfused

  I am curious as to where the actual quotes (in it's entirety (sp)) can be found. Due to blindly accepting what is written for so many years, and then having a few years on the internet under my belt, I need to see both sides of the story.
• 

  ChristianObserver

  Hello!

  For DazedAndConfused and anyone else who would like to check the original - the full article written by Judith Whelan and appearing in the June 16th 2001 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald may be found at

  http://www.smh.com.au/news/0106/16/pageone/pageone10.html

  The original article has been 'selectively edited' and you will see that the final sentence of the article has been placed within the body of the quotation within Awake. This sentence relates to an entirely different study by Dr Ross Wilson into medical accidents - not deaths from transfusion, although its positioning suggests that it does the latter. If there were 18,000 transfusion related deaths per year in Australia, there would be outrage I would have thought!

  You can access plenty of information about the earlier research of Dr Wilson into hospital accidents if you wish on the internet via a search facility. A further search should also bring up information about the blood audit follow-up on which the original is actually reporting.

  I would agree with BP's description 'misleading insertion' and would report that I have seen elsewhere the use of this 'misleading insertion' by a Jehovah's Witness on a public message board from which erroneous conclusions have been drawn.

  From your original posting - BP - may I safely assume that this is an exact reproduction of what appeared in Awake as I have been at some pains to trace an original without success to date?

  With thanks :o)
• 

  hawkaw

  Well done people. This is an excellent find.

  Right On!!!

  I hope Randy and Kent pick up on this and publishe this thread on their web sites
• 

  Simon

  For future readers ... here is a copy of the linked article:

  Doctors give 'dangerous' transfusions

  By Judith Whelan, Health Writer

  Doctors continued giving blood transfusions to patients after being told they did not need the treatment and that it could kill them, an expert on hospital safety has revealed.

  Dr Ross Wilson, head of the NSW Council for Quality in Health Care, said the cases showed it was not enough to merely tell medical staff how they needed to change their practices.

  "It's a bit like getting a ticket from a speed camera - it won't stop you from going out and speeding again," he said.

  Last year, a team directed by Dr Wilson carried out an audit of blood use in 10 NSW hospitals.

  It found that one in three transfusions were being administered when, under NSW Health guidelines, they should not have been.

  The guidelines call for a blood transfusion if the patient's haemoglobin level is seven or below.

  One should not be given if the level is 10 or above. (A healthy male's haemoglobin level is about 14 to 16, a woman's 12 to 15.)

  "In the middle is a grey area where clinical judgment should be used," Dr Wilson said.

  Giving an unnecessary transfusion could kill a patient by inducing heart failure, he said.

  It could also transmit viruses, or there was a risk of the donor blood being incompatible with the recipient's.

  Dr Wilson suggested that other checks and balances be introduced into the hospital system, such as doctors being asked to fill out forms that reinforce transfusion guidelines or double-check their requests for transfusions in computerised links to the blood supply service.

  Such changes would be likely to be opposed by doctors, on the grounds that they would interfere with their ability to make clinical judgments about their patients.

  The audit results were made public in January, and the researchers told the doctors of the results.

  But when they took another audit a month later, the results were the same; the doctors had not changed their practices.

  "I have no reason to expect they'd be any different now," Dr Wilson said.

  Doctors were not deliberately endangering patients' lives, he said.

  "There are some practitioners who think increasing the haemoglobin level of patients increases the safety of patient care."

  He said the study showed that "new change strategies" had to be introduced to decrease the risk of mistakes being made.

  For instance, the best-practice guidelines could be included on the form doctors filled out to request a blood transfusion, or computer systems could be linked to the blood bank so that guidelines could be cross-checked with the transfusion request.

  Dr Wilson said: "Ultimately, and this is the method I prefer, patients would be informed about it so they could question their physician directly."

  That might include fact sheets being given to them or their families, he said.

  Six years ago Dr Wilson co-authored the study Quality in Australian Health Care, which found that about 18,000 people a year died as a result of complications they developed directly as a result of the medical treatment they received.

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  This is a perfect example of how dishonest the WT is in how they write and quote ... this deception is not by accident - it is entirely intentional.
• 

  hawkaw

  Thanks Simon - this great stuff.

  I hope Lee and Marvin take note of this little gem!!!

  hawk