A peek into the history of fanatical BLOOD DOCTRINE origins

by Terry 19 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  DS211

  Marked
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  konceptual99

  Great work once again Terry.

  They would argue that having a transfusion is not a DF offence. This has stealthily come in over several years and, to the best of my knowledge, never been published publicly. They have made it a DF by actions offence just so they can play a media game and avoid uncomfortable questions.

  Of course it's a Hobsen's Choice as far as the individual is concerned. The shunning is the same.
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  Terry

  SECTION THREE

  The WTS has not been content just to exaggerate real threats. In line with claims about alleged personality changes as a result of vaccinations and organ transplants, it appealed to the same sort of quack scientists:
  
  "Criminals in jail are given the opportunity to donate their blood. For example, the New York Times of April 6, 1961, reported: "Inmates of Sing Sing Prison at Ossining will give blood to the Red Cross today." A commendable act? Perhaps not as beneficial to their fellow men as the community is led to believe. . . . in his book Who Is Your Doctor and Why? Doctor Alonzo Jay Shadman says: "The blood in any person is in reality the person himself. It contains all the peculiarities of the individual from whence it comes. This includes hereditary taints, disease susceptibilities, poisons due to personal living, eating and drinking habits. . . . The poisons that produce the impulse to commit suicide, murder, or steal are in the blood." And Dr. Amrico Valrio, Brazilian doctor and surgeon for over forty years, agrees. "Moral insanity, sexual perversions, repression, inferiority complexes, petty crimes -- these often follow in the wake of blood transfusion," he says. Yet it is acknowledged in the public press that organizations whose blood supply is considered reliable obtain blood for transfusion from criminals who are known to have such characteristics." (The Watchtower, Sept. 15, 1961, p. 564)
  
  So according to the WTS a blood transfusion can give you a criminal's personality! We ask what is the more astonishing: that the WTS actually taught this nonsense or that it was able to dig up "experts" who agreed with them? We know for certain that this quackery was believed by many JWs well into the 1980s, and probably still is.
  
  It is interesting to note how much in recent years the WTS has changed its general ideas about science, and medical science in particular. While it once considered the medical profession to be demon-possessed, it is now more likely to print articles in Awake! magazine about the wonders of surgery and medicine, and it often warns against certain alternative treatments that are not backed by scientific evidence.
  
  Considering that the JW community has historically been hostile to medical professionals (and this hostility has of course been fed by the controversies related to the blood prohibition!) and positive to "alternative medicine," (some of those "experts" quoted to support the anti-vaccination stand were homeopaths) it will be interesting to see how quickly this reversal will change the attitude of the rank and file.
  
  Despite the fact that the WTS has gone to great lengths to minimize damage to the JW community by allowing more and more blood components to be used in treatment, the blood prohibition is a major cause of the strained relationship between Jehovahs Witnesses and medical professionals, and is a major reason the JWs are considered a dangerous religious group.

  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.
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  Finkelstein

  It appears the Faithful and Discrete Slave is relenting stupid and ignorant .

  Whats more disturbing is that they have the mental control of over 8 million people and their lives.
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  Terry

  I find it interesting that ISLAM is about 'surrender' to God and Jehovah's Witnesses are about 'surrender' to the Governing Body.

  Makes me sad.
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  dropoffyourkeylee

  In a followup to my previous post about the blood transfusion/Dracula theme (it's Halloween, right?),

  I must have been mistaken about the original 1931 movie. It only mentions blood transfusions, but doesn't show it. I found the movie here:

  https://archive.org/details/Dracula1931_938

  The transfusions are mentioned but not portrayed at about 29:15.

  I must have been thinking of a later remake which I believe is from the early '90's which shows a transfusion being performed:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-JqBIDDz1M

  The original book does mention blood transfusions several times. I didn't know there was such a thing as blood transfusions in the 1890's, but apparently it was well known enough that Bram Stoker could describe it in the book. It is curious how many of the same ignorant preconceptions about blood that the WT society put out in the 50's were mentioned in this novel from the 1890's.
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  Old Goat

  A mostly hidden bit of this history concerns a Witness patient whom his two Witness doctors thought needed a blood transfusion. This was in 1945 as I recall. The patient refused citing the scripture in Acts. One of the doctors, later a missionary to Mexico, wrote to the society seeking their assistance. The Society wrote back saying the Witness patient was right and the first blood transfusion articles followed. I think we can lay the blame at F. W. Franz's door.
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  TD

  ...but the 1931 movie had a very memorable scene in which the heroine received a blood transfusion which was spoken of as 'feeding'. The entire movie was based on the idea of 'feeding on blood', which in turn was based on the Victorian sensiblilities of the 1890's, which now is seen as as a substitute for 'fluids', ie. it's all a sexual metaphor.

  You see that idea repeated over and over prior to the 20th century. Note how H.G. Wells speculated that a highly evolved race might sustain itself in his 1898 novel War Of The Worlds:

  "Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures and injected it into their veins…..The physiological advantages of the practice of injection are undeniable, if one thinks of the tremendous waste of human time and energy occasioned by eating and the digestive process. Our bodies are half made up of glands and tubes and organs, occupied in turning heterogeneous food into blood."

  Note how French physician Jean Baptiste Denys reasoned that a therapeutic benefit could be derived from transfusion in a mid 17th century letter he wrote:

  "In performing transfusion it is nothing else than nourishing by a shorter road than ordinary--that is to say, placing in the veins blood all made in place of taking food which only turns to blood after several changes."

  The idea that blood directly nourishes the body as food (As opposed to simply being the organ of transport) as near as I can tell goes all the way back to Claudius Galen in the 2nd century.
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  Justitia Themis

  Interesting Terry. Thanks!
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  Terry

  I've always thought criticism of the GB and their teachings should be traced back as far as you can go and take it step by step.

  The folks who have taken the trouble to do this uncovered the instability of the men behind bad policies.

  It's all about the men and their mania.

  These aren't healthy people and the things they get away with teaching under the guise of religious instruction is simply unacceptable.

  We could all do a better job of getting angry in a productive way in exposing these miserable cranks.