Teenage Jehovah’s Witness refuses blood transfusion and dies
by mana11 15 Replies latest watchtower medical
-
-
DesirousOfChange
Are you telling me that the UK does not have laws to overturn the dumbass life-and-death decision of a 15 year old boy?
Doc
-
nicolaou
That link takes me nowhere . . -
Vidiot
DesirousOfChange - "Are you telling me that the UK does not have laws to overturn the dumbass life-and-death decisions of a 15 year old boy?"
Given recent circumstances, it can't be far off at this point.
We already have it here in Canada.
-
Daniel1555
That's old news.
This case happened in the year 2010.
Of course it is very tragic and sad.
-
stan livedeath
if i recall correctly--the person was fatally injured in a road accident--and a blood transfusion would not have saved him anyway. a tragedy.
more recently--there was a case reported of a mother of 9 dying for want of a transfusion.
which begs the question--does anyone know of any any other loss of life as a result of the watchtower policy--in the last 12 months--anywhere in the world ? only i take a lot of convincing there have been tens of thousands of deaths since the blood transusion policy was invented.
-
Phizzy
The article explains the legal position, which does not help Doctors in their decision. This poor lad died, what 5years ago ? but there will be more.
Who can say for sure he would not have lived had a Transfusion been given ?
-
Earnest
The Telegraph of 18 May 2010 reported :
A spokesman from Selly Oak hospital said: "There's not one single policy and not one single law regarding transfusions. There's no automatic right to override parental wishes or that of a minor. It's a very complex area that has to be approached on a case by case basis. "
From a legal point of view doctors who administer blood in the face of refusal by a patient may be unlawful and could lead to criminal and/or civil proceedings.
If doctors consider a minor to be competent they can consent to medical treatment, but their refusal can be overruled by the consent of a person with parental authority or by the court.
If the child is deemed not legally competent, consent will need to be obtained from someone with parental responsibility, unless it is an emergency.
Emergency treatment can be provided without consent to save the life of, or prevent serious deterioration in the health of, a child or young person.
-
LisaRose
Jehovah's Witness parents should not expect the courts to automatically step in and save them by forcing a transfusion if that's what they secretly want, they need to tear up their child's blood card and clearly state their wishes in an emergency.
As far as 10K deaths due to lack of blood transfusions, I believe that number is wildy overstated. There have been a rash of discussions about the number and I'm not going there again, but I don't believe it's anywhere near that. Even one is too many though.
-
Giordano
A lot depends on a number of criteria. For instant my mother in law needed open heart surgery back in the late 1990's....... in her weaken condition they would not operate without blood. She died.
10 year's later my sister needed surgery but her condition worsened on the operating table and they could not remove all of the tumor's. She survived and lived for another year until the cancer won out. We don't know if she could have beaten it if they could have kept her on the table.Trauma injuries often need blood and a lot of it. In third world countries Blood may be required just to keep an accident victim stable for what might be a long trip to a hospital.
It's all of these incidentals that we don't know.
"Actual statistics have never been published,but the following estimate based on publisheddata suggests about 900 Jehovah'sWitnesses die each year because of theblood refusal policy.Kitchens reported in the February 1993 issueof 'The American Journal of Medicine'(Kitchens CS: “Are transfusions overrated?Surgical outcome of Jehovah's Witnesses.”Am J Med 1993;94:117-119) that studiesbased on 1,404 operations mostly cardiovascularsurgery and hip replacement performedon Jehovah's Witnesses withoutblood transfusions reveal that 1.4 percentof the patients died due to lack of blood asa primary or contributing cause of death.This means that every time a JW has"bloodless surgery" his chance of dying is1% greater.Expressed another way, for every one hundred"bloodless" operations on Jehovah'sWitnesses, one death can be attributed toblood refusal.According to the American Association ofBlood Banks, approximately 4 million patientsreceive blood transfusions from 12.6million units of donated blood each year.That means 4 million or 15 out of every1000 Americans have conditions requiringblood transfusions each year.Since there are about 1 million Jehovah'sWitnesses in the United States, about15,000 Jehovah's Witnesses have conditions,which normally require blood transfusions.If we estimate the rate of additional deathattributable to blood loss about 1%, about150 Jehovah's Witnesses are dying each yearin the United States due to blood refusal.Furthermore, there are 6 million baptizedJehovah's Witnesses and about the samenumber of sympathizers and inactive membersworldwide. So we can conservativelymultiply this figure by a factor of six. Theresulting estimate shows that approximately900 Jehovah's Witnesses die annuallythroughout the world as a result of theblood prohibition"http://www.krev.info/library/pocetumrti.pdf
Here's more information: http://www.religioustolerance.org/witness11.htm
If you Google Jonestown (at your own risk) this is what 975 deaths looks like in one location. Also note this tragedy happened once. But that level of needless death happen's every year among JW's.