SECTION ONE
Is Watchtower doctrine on BLOOD transfusions rooted in one or more of the following?:
1. The Law of Moses binding only on Jews not Gentiles
2. The Law of the Sons of Noah (Noachian Law) given to mankind after the flood.
3. Arbitrary convictions stemming from crackpot Clayton J. Woodworth who influenced Judge Rutherford.*
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Let us begin with #3. first. . .
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Clayton J. Woodworth, co-author of the infamous seventh volume of Studies in the Scriptures, "The Finished Mystery" (1917). In 1919 he became editor of a magazine called "The Golden Age," which is now known as Awake!
Woodworth was, to be as fair as possible, the king of all looney birds.
The Golden Age became a forum for the most extravagant claims about science. And above all, Woodworth was a champion of his very special ideas about medicine and health. The Bible Students could enjoy a steady stream of health advice, each stranger than the next:
"There is no food that is right food for the morning meal. At breakfast is no time to break a fast. Keep up the daily fast until the noon hour... Drink plenty of water two hours after each meal; drink none just before eating; and a small quantity if any at meal time. Good buttermilk is a health drink at meal times and in between. Do not take a bath until two hours after eating a meal, nor closer than one hour before eating. Drink a full glass of water both before and after the bath." (Golden Age, Sept. 9, 1925, pp. 784-785)
"The earlier in the forenoon you take the sun bath, the greater will be the beneficial effect, because you get more of the ultra-violet rays, which are healing" (Golden Age, Sept. 13, 1933, p. 777)
Doctors as agents of Satan
"We do well to bear in mind that among the drugs, serums, vaccines, surgical operations, etc., of the medical profession, there is nothing of value save an occasional surgical procedure. . . . Readers of The Golden Age know the unpleasant truth about the clergy; they should also know the truth about the medical profession, which sprang from the same demon worshipping shamans (doctor priests) as did the doctors of divinity." (Golden Age, Aug. 5, 1931 pp. 727-728)
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The magazine Golden Age (AWAKE!) took aim at vaccines and pulled the trigger! A mindless nincompoopery against
germs, disease, aluminum cookware and such brought Jehovah's Witnesses into a dangerous zone of vulnerability and put a burden of belief
on simple folk with not much education who believed such information was coming as a special warning from Jehovah.
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"Thinking people would rather have smallpox than vaccination, because the latter sows seeds of syphilis, cancers, eczema, erysipelas, scrofula, consumption, even leprosy and many other loathsome affections. Hence the practice of vaccinations is a crime, an outrage, and a delusion" (Golden Age, Jan. 5,1929, p. 502)
Yes, a vaccination was "a crime" and was sometimes likened to a rape (like JWs today say about blood transfusions). Moreover, like almost everything else it has been used as a "sign of the last days:"
"Vaccination never prevented anything and never will, and is the most barbarous practice. . . . We are in the last days; and the devil is slowly losing his hold, making a strenuous effort meanwhile to do all the damage he can, and to his credit can such evils be placed. . . . Use your rights as American citizens to forever abolish the devilish practice of vaccinations." (Golden Age, Oct. 12, 1921, p. 17)
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This sort of thing eventually emboldened the Society to stretch things even farther into the crazy zone. Blood transfusions were the next target.
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Woodworths primary argument against vaccinations seems to have been that this was "animal filth" that would "pollute" humanity. According to The Golden Age, vaccinations not only caused all kind of dreadful diseases, including the Spanish Flu, it even retarded the intellect of men and caused moral bankruptcy:
"..much looseness of our day along sexual lines may be traceable to the easy and continual violation of the divine commands to keep human and animal blood apart from each other. With cells of foreign blood racing through his veins a man is not normal, not himself, but lacks the poise and balance which makes for self control." (Golden Age, Febr. 4, 1931, p. 293)
We will see exactly the same argument applied to organ transplants and blood transfusions later!
Most interestingly, the WTS did, in the same magazine, give some "Biblical" arguments for refusing vaccinations:
"Vaccination is a direct violation of the everlasting covenant that God made with Noah after the flood." (ibid.)
Woodworths primary argument against vaccinations seems to have been that this was "animal filth" that would "pollute" humanity. According to The Golden Age, vaccinations not only caused all kind of dreadful diseases, including the Spanish Flu, it even retarded the intellect of men and caused moral bankruptcy:
"..much looseness of our day along sexual lines may be traceable to the easy and continual violation of the divine commands to keep human and animal blood apart from each other. With cells of foreign blood racing through his veins a man is not normal, not himself, but lacks the poise and balance which makes for self control." (Golden Age, Febr. 4, 1931, p. 293)
We will see exactly the same argument applied to organ transplants and blood transfusions later!
*Notes:
The information in this section and the following builds on Prof. M. James Penton's Apocalypse Delayed - The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses (University of Toronto Press, 1985), and on extensive quotations and comments published by Jan Haugland and Ken Raines.