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I agree that lawsuits over damage caused by the blood doctrine is a long shot at best. The applicant would need to establish extreme duress. You end up going down the "mind control" and strict enforcement road, which is awfully messy. Instances where HLC's have imposed themselves, esp if they have dealt with medics directly might get some traction.
This legal threat would, in my opinion, be somewhat diminished were Watchtower to undo its blood doctrine by, for instance, making the choice to accept transfusion of whole allogeneic blood strictly a conscience matter just like it does with all the blood products currently accepted without possibility of congregational repercussion.
Historically, litigation before courts on the basis of religious brain washing or mind control have failed. If not initially then on appeal. To prevail on this basis would involve an overturning of black letter interpretation and common law. I suppose it’s not impossible. But calling it a long shot is, to me, a big understatement.
Nevertheless, a sudden discarding of the doctrine would have people queueing up to try anyway . . . the outrage would create a crisis for their precious image . . . and recruitment and retention would get hit hard . . . bad for business. Small steps over time is the strategy . . . they can almost claim "we've always maintained it to be a conscience matter for the individual" already.
I completely agree on this point. Lawsuits probably would be filed, and particularly in litigious countries like the USA. Media coverage would be brutal for Watchtower.
The truth is . . . they've callously perpetrated the doctrine for totally selfish reasons, not believing it themselves, causing huge loss of life. It's still going on today. It's actions like that which make me question my abhorrence of the death penalty. It's pre-meditated mass-murder.
Well said!
Marvin Shilmer
http://marvinshilmer.blogspot.com
PS: Currently Watchtower is very concerned about its appointed HLC members making their coercive presence too conspicuous. There is contemporary evidence in the literature pointing to undo coercion of HLC members, and it has the attention by those looking for it. (See the more recent references found in the article Coercion to Refuse Blood available at: http://marvinshilmer.blogspot.com/2011/05/coercion-to-refuse-blood.html
