With travel and internet access the way it is, too many of us have discovered it isn't a United group anymore.
Storing Blood okay????
by Mulan 20 Replies latest watchtower medical
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patio34
Hi Mulan,
I don't know anything about a new policy about blood. However, one JW professional in the field in a class once related that stored blood was much more dangerous than donated blood to use. The reasoning was that your own blood is not tested for diseases the way donated blood is. Then, while it is stored, it is out of contact with your immune system. So any "beasties" present can grow unhampered by your immune system, then it is put back into you with much stronger beasties. So, according to that reasoning, you are much more likely to get a really bad disease from your own stored blood.
However, I am simply relating this. I do not know the truthfulness or reasonableness of the theory.
Pat
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TheStar
ummm..... the only thing that is allowed, conscience permitting is the stortage of blood as long as it is used for what the society determines as blood factions.
Just like what you reported before STAR
Hawkaw,
Re-read the letter. http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=30611&site=3
It mentions nothing about storing your blood. The letter addresses the issue of whether or not JWs can donate blood since it is a conscience decision to take blood fractions.
If it has leaked out that the WTS is now permitting JWs to store their own blood then that would explain why they have replaced their old Worship book with a new one and maybe we will see those "no allogeneic blood transfusion" blood cards given out next year afterall. This is just speculation on my part, I can't help it... hehehe
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In_between_days
I was told by a JW relative that the blood documents for JW's this year are totally different and outline many many procedures that involve blood and blood components, and apparently it is totally up to the JW's conscience and discernment which ones to say yes or no too. Not likely, I think, has anyone heard anything like this?
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crownboy
I was there this year when they gave the "blood talk" and did not give out the cards. If my memory serves right, they did not change the policy on storage of a persons own blood, and indeed I recall that point being stressed in the talk that was given in my congregation (the talk was based on some watchtower of 1997, I believe). However, my meeting attendance is bad at best, so this may indeed be a new policy brought out later. I went to a DC, and this point was not brought out at all, but the absense of talk on the issue in the new "offical" book, as well as the discarded "new" blood cards makes this claim rather plausible.
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dungbeetle
I well remember the talk from last year's DC wehre the speaker stated that JW's were the only true religion on earth becasue they are the only ones who treat blood according to biblically prescribed law.
Now, he did not and would not come right out and say at a district convention that JW's refuse life-saving emergency blood transfusions. And even if he was, he is being disengenuous becasue many groups (I can think of two offhand, and one of them is OLDER than the JW's) refuse blood transfusions.
This time around, I am going to tape it. Then it is going up on the web. Then it is going to Bulgaria.
RUN WATCHTOWER RUN
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hawkaw
Star,
Read paragraph 3, sentence 3.
The only way you can get the components is to have someone remove the blood and STORE IT in a bag. Then the STORED bag of WHOLE blood goes to the blood bank and is processed into the required component you require. The rest of the blood is then disposed.
Thus, anyway you look at it you, conscience permitting of course, are allowed to DONATE and STORE your whole blood until the required fraction has been obtain.
hawk
p.s. - of course this is an impossible treatment for most blood products because a lot of them require litres of your blood just to make one treatment - something NONE of us have. I guess the next question to the Hospital Information Service would be - can a few thousand witnesses go in and DONATE and STORE blood for the sole purpose of making enough of a type of blood component (eg Factor 8) for one treatment?
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Room 215
The easiest-- and most principled-- way for the Society to extricate itself from this tragic morass is to retrench back to the pre-1962 policy, in which offenders were treated simply as spiritually weak and in need of building up. Males with positions were no longer considered exemplary and therefore were removed from positions of responsibility nor allowed to represent the congregation in prayer.
The gravest blunder was for the Society to categorize acceptance of blood as a wicked act, actionable by disfellowshipping, placing it in the same class as murder, fornication, adultery, etc. If, for example, a male JW breadwinner whose life is in immediate peril and who is reasonably assured that a transfusion will save him, acquiesces to the treatment under pressure from the knowledge that his family needs him desperately, and who is personally and understandably frightened to die, why shoud he be regarded in the same light as an adulterer or etortioner? And who agrees to a transfusion as an act of defiance?
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TheStar
Hawkaw,
I guess we would have to read the brother's letter to the society to know exactly what he was asking. I can only go by the society's response when they say:
"You asked about the propriety of a Christian's donating blood for the purpose of having minor blood fractions extracted and used."
I don't see anything about storing blood.
It is quite obvious that blood components (and whole blood) are stored in some type of bag or pouch, of course I'm not 100% sure of that as I do not know the procedures for the extraction of blood components but that is not the point anyway.
This letter is a response to the question of whether a JW can donate blood since only through blood donations can you get blood fractions (and JWs currently don't donate blood and therefore don't contribute to the bank of blood fractions of which they may use).
That is how I read it anyway. I don't see anything regarding storage of blood there.
Edited by - TheStar on 2 July 2002 18:9:27
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Pistoff
WHy is anyone trying to make sense of what they are doing now?
This is obviously an attempt to slowly back away from a totally corrupt policy, one that makes no sense whatsoever.
I only recently saw the chronology of the vaccination/blood serum/transfusion policies; I am a lifelong witness, all of my family is in the truth, and I can easily say, I was totally deceived by the society. I was shocked to learn that all blood fractions are now allowable, including hemoglogin solutions, and that they did not just come out and say so; we just have to infer it from the lack of condemnation, just like the factor VII not being acknowledged until three years after the fact!! I asked my wife if she knew what blood fractions were allowable, and she looked at me like I was an alien and said, that is why we have the HLC. Holy sh*t! I was raised in a cult!!!