The point of the thread was to workout if there was any basis for the claims about the number of JWs who have died from refusing blood. Hard as it may be to believe Cedars' ego is not always item number one on other people's agenda.
250,000 Jehovah's Witnesses have died refusing blood
by nicolaou 739 Replies latest watchtower medical
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Simon
Adding to imperceptibility would be the standard play-down among JWs of the clinical reason for a given premature death. Only sometimes do we find candor among JWs about a death resulting directly from refusing blood. More often than not we hear sentiments suggesting something akin to “ We can’t know for sure why he died ” or “ Even with a transfusion we can’t know he’d have survived ” and the like.
That's the point - patient outcomes are rarely so binary with certain life or certain death from any treatment.
If even the attending physician can't say for certain then I find it difficult to believe that someone reading records 10 years later can be so sure with any level of confidence especially when the study was based on so few people. This is what I think is missing in all this - a confidence rating for the figures.
Something like 25k +/- 15k would be more acceptable and more realistic ... we can't now for sure but we can maybe work out the possible range.
Yes, it's not going to be as dramatic but is more convincing.
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Simon
Maoris comprised just under 20% of the JW patients who had anaemia in the study
There could well be socio-economic factors then: poorer people / less likely to travel / be JWs, could be more likely to be susceptible and at increased risk of anemia and then refusing treatment. People who are more wealthy, immigrants, less likely to be JWs etc... less likely to end up dead.
This is the danger of trying to take figures from a small area and apply them to a larger population. This to me sounds like it could be a big unaccounted for factor.
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TD
I don't know this absolutely, but it does seem that increased mortality associated with refusing blood is probably many times higher in less developed countries.
It's been a few years, but the following letter appeared in the British Medical Journal in 1999: (BMJ. 1999 March 27; 318(7187): 873)
Editor—Minerva reports that a Jehovah’s Witness survived emergency surgery for a leaking abdominal aneurysm despite having a postoperative haemoglobin concentration of only 30 g/l; he spent 14 weeks in hospital. Those of us who work in rural Africa can only wonder how much it cost in the face of claims of rationing and cost cutting in the NHS. Such a stay must easily have cost a six figure sum.
Here in Uganda for £250 000 a year we can treat 25 000 outpatients and 7000 inpatients, conduct over 1000 deliveries, and perform 1500 operations. We run a community health programme for 500 000 people. The costs incurred by this one patient might run our unit for a whole year. Will the time come when a religious group will be charged the costs of keeping its members alive? Ethically one may feel that one should do everything, whatever the cost; at the end of the financial year, however, elective surgery that could be life improving has to be cancelled.
The choice is easy here in Uganda. When a child who has severe anaemia from malaria with hookworm infestation and undernutrition comes in the choice is simple: he or she has a transfusion or dies.
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Nathan Natas
I'm convinced that threads like this are a major cause of global warming.
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runForever
Hello, I would just like to add something to this discussion. The anemia deaths of Jehovah's Witnesses of 50,000 seems unrealistic.
Assuming 20,000,000 JW's lived in the organization during the blood ban and assuming a 50.2 deathrate per 100,000 which is the highest in
the world from anemia deaths in sao tome and principe we only get 10,040 deaths.
Assuming 30,000,000 JW's lived during the ban we only get 15,060.
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Giordano
This is an important discussion but it would help if we had more statistics about increased mortality if one refuses a transfusion it is clearer concerning trauma however.
What we won't get however is information like the following. A close JW relative had surgery to remove tumors. They had her open past the time they could without a blood transfusion........so they left smaller tumor's still in hoping the Kemo would take care of it. For a while it did but within a year the cancer came back.
There was no mention of the failure of that first operation.
So how many times has someone passed on the transfusion only to have their surgery be incomplete? It took well into the 1990's for bloodless surgery to reach a point where it could be applied.
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Simon
runForever: Your 20m -> 10k figures are per-year right?
Going off the chart I think the average looks to be about 3.5m ... but I think many of those would never dream of sacrificing themselves (you know, the ones that get dragged to meetings and field service) or would be kids (tend to be protected by courts) etc... So 30m total probably isn't a bad number to go off.
But despite the claims they are predominently a religion of developed countries (US, Canada, UK, France, Australia, Japan etc...) which affects death-rates and treatment outcomes.
So yes, using the highest deathrate is unlikely to get to the same numbers.
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Simon
Also lets not forget that they take most blood products, just not whole blood transfusions - I think the HLCs role is more to quietly convince JWs to go ahead with treatment as much as anything else without them making it clear in print that they have all but abandoned the policy.
Wait, what are we fighting over again? In all the excitement I kind of forgot ... [tail off into Clint Eastwood "so you gotta ask yourself" quote]
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Marvin Shilmer
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“MARVIN, you didn't respond to my earlier question where I asked you point-blank if you contacted the author who conducted the study (AM Belaev, was it?) and ASKED him whether it's statistically valid to take the findings from a geographically-limited study in NZ to extrapolate Worldwide?”
adamah,
I have not contacted the author inquiring as you suggest because it’s unnecessary.
But it if helps your sensibilities you should know the author uses the same data set to make a universal statistical statement saying “compared with JW patients, ARBC transfusion in anaemic patients was associated with a 10 times reduced mortality, lower rates of cardiac, neurologic and infective complications.”
So if you question whether Dr. Beliaev accepts that the given data set is useful toward a broad extrapolation the answer is yes. He does it himself right within the article.
Marvin Shilmer
