Hemodilution and Cell Saver both are technically autologos blood transfusions but are allowed. But storing your own blood and then reinfusing in the operation is not allowed. Welcome to the wonderfully contradictory world of Watchtower.
Medical Tourism and Medi-Coin - investing in bloodless medicine
by OrphanCrow 15 Replies latest watchtower medical
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OrphanCrow
steve: The procedure you mention in your OP, OrphanCrow, involves the reuse of the patient's own blood "lost" during the operation.
Doesn't the organization forrbid this type of procedure on grounds that once blood leaves the body it is not to be transfused back, as in autologous blood transfusions?Ilove is correct - both hemodilution and cell saver procedures are 'allowed' with the approval of the Watchtower Society.
Contradictory? Of course it is. Over time the Society put caveats on the procedures, but both of the procedures had been done (without those caveats) on Jehovah's Witnesses for decades before the WTS came out with their "rules" around accepting both procedures.
In 1982, the WT said that hemodilution was objectionable.
In 1989, the WT alluded that scavenging techniques were allowed.
It wasn't until 1995 that the WT actually came right out and gave approval for hemodilution and the cell saver.
Here is the problem - a HUGE problem. The Watchtower was fully aware of the procedures that were being tried out on Jehovah's Witnesses in the operating theater.
Hemodilution techniques had been used on JWs since at least 1963. And the WT knew it was. That is the procedure that the WT hero of the time, Denton Cooley, utilized in cardiac surgery on JWs, including children and infants. And the WT knew - once Cooley was successful in operating on JWs, the WT goons promoted the use of hemodilution and cell savers on JWs when they approached medical doctors with their threats of "do it our way or we will see you in court".
The HLC was formally set up in the States in the early 80s but it had been piloted in Canada beginning around 1970. The JWs involved in arranging surgical procedures, for the unwitting JW patients, were fully aware of the procedures that they were pressuring the medical profession to perform. And those procedures included both the cell saver and hemodilution.
Literally hundreds and hundreds of JWs had those procedures done to them long before the WT came out with an "official" position on them. Decades, in fact. You can find many of them in medical journals - here is one of Denton Cooley's brag books:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC341795/pdf/thij00001-0060.pdf
Of course, once the bloodless world was beginning to be saturated with JWs themselves, it became apparent that there were problems with how some of these autologous blood transfusions were being done. So, by the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s, JW medical professionals themselves became involved in the picture and that is when the caveats got put in place around the procedures to make it seem like the JWs were meticulous about following Biblical direction.
"Continuous flow" became the catch phrase for both autologous procedures.
diogenesister: Orphan Crow my blood pressure rises every time I read one of your posts....but I'm grateful all the same.
Yes, this material is difficult to process. The duplicate world of WT blood policy doesn't just make blood pressure rise, it also makes a person's head spin. It is crazy making stuff.
And UndertheRadar....no....I wouldn't buy a used car from Mr. Columbus. And I certainly wouldn't let him make my medical decisions for me.
Just the fact that so many of the JW men who are involved in promoting bloodless medicine are salesmen and not medical professionals should be telling all on its own.
What other branch of medicine requires so much hard sell? Why would effective health care procedures need to be promoted/sold?
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steve2
Thanks OrphanCrow.
The more I learn (and relearn) about the 'in's and out's' of the organization's rulings on the 'proper' use of blood, the more it reminds me of the intricacies of the Jewish Talmud. Talk about followers of the teachings of men.
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Vidiot
@ steve2...
Too true, but that's not really what Orphancrow's getting at.
Her point is that it seems - more and more - that the particulars of the WTS's blood-related policies are determined by WT-related financial interests than by doctrinal or interpretational factors...
...a prospect that is far more disturbing.
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SadElder
Currently, Mr. Columbus is a Sales and Leasing Consultant for Fox Honda in Auburn, New York.
Oh yes I'm going to trust my healthcare decisions on a car salesman. I think not! -
steve2
Vidiot, thanks. Yes I had taken the point about the issue being governed by already-set up financial interests which in turn governed the organization's "Scriptural" policies or teachings.