by nicolaou 739 Replies latest watchtower medical
here in the UK any deaths as a result of refusing blood would hit the media big time. i can only recall 1 in recent years--a young man died following a road crash--he refused blood--but that wasnt directly the cause of death.
i got baptised 50 years ago--and i doubt if there have been 50 blood refusal deaths in all that time---in the UK.
Thats a good point BigMac death caused by refusing BTs usually makes some kind of news.
Most of time but not always.
My mother for example refused a BT when she became severely sick from an infection in the Hospital a few years ago,
she died 2 days later, of course it wasn't known by most of my family who are not JW until a month later.
The only ones who really knew were my father and my older brother who are JWS.
Sorry folks but those high numbers of 250,000 just aren't realistic.
The change in what parts/factions of BTs that usable has lowered deaths as well.
Staying the low side of 50,000 since 1948 would be a fair approximation.
Nevertheless no small number.
This comes at a wrongly screwed up understanding/interpretation out of an ancient Hebrew law, which was produced
from an idealogical concept that blood had some vital sacredness but was actually a dietary law not a health consuming law.
Good grief humans are stupid and when they get really stupid they become very dangerous.
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“i got baptised 50 years ago--and i doubt if there have been 50 blood refusal deaths in all that time---in the UK.”
I think you should expand your knowledge by reviewing vetted literature on the subject of Jehovah’s Witnesses and mortality due to abiding by Watchtower’s blood doctrine.
The UK produces a document titled Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths Report (CEMD) with the purpose of identifying mortality related to maternity. Significant to Jehovah’s Witnesses is the following finding:
“In the CEMD the very high risk of mortality in women who refuse blood transfusion was highlighted [4]. The death rate in this group was 1 per 1,000 maternities compared with an expected incidence of less than 1 per 100,000 maternities.”—( Khadra et al, A criterion audit of women's awareness of blood transfusion in pregnancy, BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 2002, 2:7 (Full text available at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/2/7)
This report of mortality due to Watchtower’s blood doctrine is of only a single patient presentation when there are many presentations where insufficient blood supply leads to death without blood transfusion.
Marvin Shilmer
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“…those high numbers 250,000 just aren't realistic.”
Anecdotal evidence is a poor basis for conclusions, and that is the underpinning of your conclusion above. Newspapers are not a very good resource for measuring deaths due to following Watchtower doctrine. If any information source leverages sensationalism it’s the commercial news sources. It’s how they sell their news. Yet most deaths due to Watchtower’s blood doctrine never see the news. Why? It’s not sufficiently sensational unless a child or mother is involved. Even then these cases go underreported in news media unless hospital officials or individual physicians publicize the event.
Finding this information is a process of meticulously scouring medical records by professionals trained to understand what they’re reading.
Marvin Shilmer
Yet most deaths due to Watchtower’s blood doctrine never see the news. Why? It’s not sufficiently sensational
i cant agree with that--not in the UK. the young man's story i referred to above made national TV on several occasions. the blood issue has always been BIG news in the UK.
dont get me wrong---i'm not trying to knock down this thread--in fact--the blood doctrine was the key reason i quit the cult in 1971.
i really think if 50 thousand had died from refusing--it would have become an international scandal and may well have toppled the watchtower.
Yes I agree Marvin on the sensationalism of the media and that its a bad avenue to draw a calculation from.
But I'm also making a calculation from the number of JWS back to 1946 up until today.
There are many variables to consider.
Averaging 250,000 over 68 years comes to 3676 people a year .
There is probably a lesser amount of JWS not dieing from not taking a complete BT due to medical advances and blood factions being allowed.
marvin - why not rewrite your blog to get the number to match 250k?
a 5x discrepancy from 50k seems worthy of proper research and documentation, which you are well placed to do.
My mother died from refusal of a blood transfusion, a young school mate died from refusal of a blood transfusion, a young girl in the KH died from no blood and none of them made any sort of impression on local news media. That was from one congregation. Several others in the circuit also died from no blood and none of them made headlines either. I don't think media coverage is anywhere near a touchstone to gauge the death rate.
I do agree that several thousand per year seems exaggerated.
I wonder how many Jehovah's Witnesses died between 1968 and 1982 (the 14-year Watchtower Organ Transplant Ban)
