by nicolaou 739 Replies latest watchtower medical
The risk in any discussion such as this is, proponents of transfusions will tout the statistical advantages of taking blood whilst opponents of blood will tout the statistical disadvantages.
And therein lies a big problem: the study was done by proponents of blood transfusion, hardly an independent study (and I couldn't find anyone but 'us' citing this study either).
What I found on the Red Cross site was a claim that every two seconds someone in the U.S. will need blood.
That works out to 16 Mil people per year (assuming no one goes back for 2nds), which given 300 Mil, works out to only 5%, max. (As the other bullets point out, patients with sickle-cell and leukemia will require many transfusions during the course of their treatment, sometimes daily).
I think the number of people who receive transfusions is something like 4.5 or 5 million per year in the US. I did read it but can't seem to find the page with it again.
It can be confusing because many of the stats jump around between transfusions vs patients vs units of blood.
And of course not all transfusions are 'equal' (i.e. JWs only care about full-blood now, which was different in the past)
Anytime I see stats along the lines of "every 5 minutes someone ..." I always remember not to assume it's different people. It could be just some really unlucky guy!
BTW: Your blog post on Noah / blood was a great read and very entertaining!
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“Marvin: you don't seem to 'get' that your tiny study in a small country with some rather unique circumstances simply can't be applied to 'the world' with any degree of accuracy. You can use as many decimal places as you want, but it's precision and not accuracy.”
You keep saying things like that yet you have failed to express any reason why this data set is not useful for conservative and/or liberal extrapolations based on certain criterion, such as life expectancy in New Zealand compared to the rest of the world, state of healthcare in New Zealand compared to the rest of the world, etc.
Do we, for instance, have any reason to think there are more or less cases of severe anemia in New Zealand compared to the rest of the world (that are not accounted for in the study)? If so, what are those reasons? My review and conclusions assume the best case scenario in terms of mortality.
Do we, for instance, have any reason to think outcomes for treating severe anemia in New Zealand are better or worse compared to the rest of the world? If so, what are those reasons? My review and conclusions assume the best case scenario in terms of mortality.
You’ve made your assertions above. Now prove it.
My use of these particular statistics is done to keep the numbers as conservative as possible!
Marvin Shilmer
Marvin: do those 4 hospitals treat more or fewer patients with anemia than others in New Zealand?
This could be a huge source of variation.
If I were going to do a study on anemia outcomes I'd probably quite likely pick one that got a lot of them.
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“@simon, marvin
“call me a simpleton but....
“- Beliaev and Marvin agree 10x mortality for anemic JWs
“- 0.2/100,000 is the accepted mortality rate for anemic non-JW's
“- 2/100,000 mortality would be a reasonable assumption for anemic JW's
“now do the maths. and it ain't 50,000 dead JW;s.”
besty,
An annual sample size of 12,700 with an annual population of 3.3 (that would be 33 over 10 years) presents a ratio of 3848-to-1.
In year 1998 there were 5,544,059 JWs. You do the math and tell readers what a ratio of 3848-to-1 gives us for the year 1998 alone.
Can you do that, and put this hard number in writing for readers to watch your math?
Marvin Shilmer
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“Marvin: do those 4 hospitals treat more or fewer patients with anemia than others in New Zealand?
“This could be a huge source of variation.”
Simon,
In my presentation what you inquire of presents no variation because my presentation assumes other trauma facilities in the same region as the 4 experienced exactly ZERO deaths due to refusal of blood transfusion by severely anemic patients.
Again, my calculation was performed to arrive at very conservative results.
Marvin Shilmer
An annual sample size of 12,700 with an annual population of 3.3 (that would be 33 over 10 years) presents a ratio of 3848-to-1.
Did I zone out for a minute, where did the 3.3 come from and how is that a 'population'?
Are you sure you don't have population and sample size back to front?
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“Dare I say it, but do we need to deduct from the figure an estimated number of lives saved by not taking blood?”
This is a coefficient of the data study because the study included those who refuse blood and those who accept blood. Hence if there were JWs in the study who survived the result of refusing blood then this only reduced the hard count of deaths, and it is the hard count of deaths forming the basis of this information and subsequent calculations.
Marvin Shilmer
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“And therein lies a big problem: the study was done by proponents of blood transfusion, hardly an independent study (and I couldn't find anyone but 'us' citing this study either).”
Says who?
Marvin Shilmer
Marvin, I think you can't see the wood for the trees.
How about we step back ...
Here's the mortality rate for EVERYTHING (US):
If we take the 30,000,000 overall count for JWs which seems reasonable then we get 240,000 JW deaths.
(30,000,000 / 100,000 x 799.5)
If my numbers are right then you are claiming that over 20% of JWs die because of refusing blood transfusions.
Is this correct?
