Jehovah's Witness Claims Surgeon Refused to Operate

OrphanCrow

Jehovah's Witnesses are unreasonable in the way they expect the larger community to respond to their no blood policy. The medical community is too often held hostage by their insistence on adhering to tan erroneous interpretation of an old book.

(*full article at link)

How would you handle a patient who wanted and needed knee surgery but who refused on religious grounds to accept any blood products?
Frank M. Brown, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at the Asheville (N.C.) VA Medical Center, was sued by a Jehovah's Witness named William Clinton, who claimed Dr. Brown refused to operate on him and thereby violated his First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Dr. Brown says he didn't refuse, but he did try to talk Mr. Clinton into reconsidering his refusal to accept blood products under any circumstances.

nonjwspouse

The WTBTS is excessively litigious.The lawyers must LOVE to get JW cases. heck, don't all the Bethel branches have them in house?

Personally, I feel it is the lawyers who ultimately control the WTBTS finances, direct much of the decision making , and at this point view it as a cash cow.

Sabin

Oh yes Mr William Clinton you want your conscience on the matter of blood to be excepted, your religious freedom. But what of the Doctors conscience, of not wanting as he may of believed to risk a patients life?

OrphanCrow

Sabin: Oh yes Mr William Clinton you want your conscience on the matter of blood to be excepted, your religious freedom. But what of the Doctors conscience, of not wanting as he may of believed to risk a patients life?

It is the same as their approach to blood fractions. They want to dip into the donor pool but at the same time, they won't give back. They want their cake and eat it too.

On the one hand, the medical community has been forced to treat the JWs as though they have some kind of rare disorder and yet, on the other hand, they want to have the "rights" of people who don't suffer from the JW delusion.

If that JW had seen a doctor who told him, "Hey, man, I can't operate on you because your heart is too weak to survive the surgery. It is instant suicide to put you on the table and I cannot do that", would the JW still cry discrimination?

This JW had unreasonable expectations. Those unreasonable expectations are fueled by the WTS' no blood propaganda that distorts the reality of what bloodless surgery actually is. The WTS no blood "educational material" creates a false expectation in those who follow the blood cult.

Scully

Why didn't the JW seek out assistance from the Hospital Liaison Committee™ to find a surgeon who was willing to perform bloodless surgery?

OrphanCrow

Scully: Why didn't the JW seek out assistance from the Hospital Liaison Committee™ to find a surgeon who was willing to perform bloodless surgery?

Scully, that is part of the problem. Bloodless surgery is NOT suitable for all patients or in all situations.

According to the article that is linked, the patient already had bloodless surgery. That is not the issue. The issue is that in spite of the unrealistic promises of bloodless surgery, bloodless procedures still have limitations and the patient was limited by an infection that made bloodless surgery not a viable option.

OneEyedJoe

I can almost see both sides of this. Knee surgery ought to have a nearly zero chance that blood will be needed, so it seems like the doctor was probably overreacting somewhat. Unless there was something unusual in play here, putting the patient under anesthesia presents a greater risk of death than does the refusal of blood. I had 3 knee surgeries of varying levels of invasiveness as a jw and both doctors acted like it was weird that we were even bringing it up because the likelihood that blood would be needed was so low.

That said, if a doctor isn't comfortable with the parameters of a surgery, do you really want him operating on you anyway? Even if their discomfort isn't reasonable, I wouldn't want them to just ignore it and go on. Lots of people have knee injuries so it's not that hard to find a knee specialist and I'm sure the surgeon here would've been all too happy to provide a referral. Sometimes things don't go exactly how you want, it's not the end of the world. Why people can't just move on and instead feel the need to sue in cases like this just baffles me.

Hopefully this gets thrown out. Doctors ought to have their ability to follow the Hippocratic oath protected.

Edit: that's what I get for posting before reading the article fully... Apparently there were complications so the JW is clearly 100% stupid.

eyeuse2badub

The 'blood issue' is becoming a giant "cluster f**k" for the wtbts. Blood fractions?? lol--really! What a joke!

Anytime I get a chance, I point out to the brothers, sisters, my wife and others conscientious JW's that whenever they have a "blood test" or blood drawn to check for various health issues, they are violating the the watchtower blood policy because they are actually 'donating' blood for non sacrificial purposes. The blood should be poured out on the ground, not sent to some laboratory for processing--right?

just saying!

eyeuse2badub

OrphanCrow

OneeyedJoe: Unless there was something unusual in play here...

What is "unusual in play here" is bloodless surgery.

Bloodless surgery is not as simple as just having the same procedure as everyone else but just flying it solo without a bag of blood. This patient, who had already undergone a bloodless procedure, was unsuitable for a bloodless procedure becuase he had an infection. Infections are a complicating factor that make a bloodless procedure not viable.

...putting the patient under anesthesia presents a greater risk of death than does the refusal of blood.

Exactly. Bloodless surgery is "putting a patient under anesthesia" in ways that are not performed in "regular" surgical procedures. The use of a cell saver and hemodilution procedures are the domain of the anethesiologist, not the surgeon.

Scully

Orphan Crow:

Bloodless surgery is NOT suitable for all patients or in all situations.

As an RN, I am well aware of this fact. However, that doesn't mean that a JW has the "right" to have surgery performed on them bloodlessly by a surgeon whose ethical position is that the particular surgery has a heightened risk of requiring blood transfusion.

It's the reverse of the situation where JWs fought for the right to abstain from saying the Pledge of Allegiance or singing the National Anthem in school. The surgeon is refusing to be bullied into operating on someone who is placing restrictions on his expertise.

Jehovah's Witness Claims Surgeon Refused to Operate

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