Jehovah's Witnesses recover best from surgery, despite refusing blood.
by nicolaou 24 Replies latest watchtower medical
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Phizzy
Thanks for posting that Study Besty, it shows that the JW's received different treatment, pre-operative, during the operation, and after, so it is not a true like for like Study, but may point the way to using less Blood, and giving better treatment.
It also said: " Although prior investigators compared immediate postoperative outcomes between Witnesses and non-Witnesses,7- 16 comparisons of long-term survival are lacking.".
One statistic that they will not perhaps even consider is one highlighted by the following experience.
An oldish JW guy I knew had serious abdominal surgery, without Blood. A day after he began to bleed to death, was rushed back into Theater, and fixed. The surgeon then had to decide, upon sending the guy home,did he risk another bleed, or did he not prescribe the usual level of anti-coagulants given to such patients to stop the risk of blood clots ?
The surgeon decided on the latter course, as another heavy bleed without access to a Blood Transfusion would be certain death for the guy.
Two days after being home, a blood clot/embolism formed and blocked the Pulmonary Artery and the old boy died.
Had he been on anti-coagulants I doubt this would have happened, and the old boy would have lived another 15 maybe 20 years.
A "hidden" victim of the WT/JW murderous Blood Doctrine.
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rebel8
Cases from 32 years ago cannot be extrapolated to today in the sense the dubs seem to be taking it. Technology is so different.
This 2012 (Not News!) article discusses reviewing outcomes from a very large sample population over several decades.
I noticed Colleen Koch wrote another article that appears (by its title) to be showing opposite results in a different population.
I get it, dubs are looking for external validation of their doctrines, because ya know, they need Satan's System Of Things to say they're right, or something. But they shouldn't cherry pick one article and not even look at the study design and what the results actually mean.
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umbertoecho
Yes I can. I did keep the papers for a long time as I was so angry at the influence they have in the medical community here. I need to do a search now and it may take a day or two so be patient with me. I recall the that these brothers made millions from their alternative proposals given to the Royal Perth hospital here and other hospitals. They were supporting some drug companies and promoting alternatives that were not necessarily proven to be safe. Stay with me and I will search out the newspapers for you.
I did throw my newspapers away in the end as I was unable to upload the content to this site. I don't have a scanner. This will be sorted out soon. The newspaper was very cautious in it's defense of the rights of those who are not witnesses. You see, the problem is this. Now we have a policy here in WA where only a tiny amount of blood is allowed at best. This was directly due to the tireless canvassing of these liaison witnesses. My blood is boiling a bit so I will go for now and look tomorrow.
All the best
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umbertoecho
nicolaou.
It's in the Western Australian. I will have to search online or phone the newspaper up. I will do this as it is scandalous for this religion to blatantly affect the rights of those who are not witnesses. This is religion involving itself in pharmaceutical companies and of course they would like that very much. It came out last year about Sept or Oct. I will get it to you as it is a very reasonable article on the rights of individuals
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JWdaughter
I read of the study a few months ago (if the same study) and my understanding is that these were for not urgent/emergency surgeries where there was plenty of time before hand to make special preparations such as improving the patients overall health and diet and boosting their systems in various ways before hand. It wasnt a fair comparison, really, since they weren't measuring the patients who had all the same preparations and then either rec'd blood or did not. The condition of a patient before going into surgery is critical. The JWs are choosing more skilled surgeons that feel up to the task. I suspect that were it all compared apples to apples, that those rec'ing blood might well do better. . . In fairness though, I think that study SHOULD be done because I am not set out to prove that blood is some magic panacea in medicine. It should be used judiciously in any case and on a case by case basis, there might well be a good reason to choose not to take blood.
But,, when it comes down to it and there is an unexpected loss of blood (and that does happen in enough surgeries that it must be considered), then blood is usually a better choice than exsanguination!
I would hope that whenever possible, all possible preparations are diligently carried out for all patients who anticipate surgery so that blood isn't necessary. When it is given as a bandaid for unskilled surgery, then you will have more issues. I don't need to be defensive of(or in favor of) blood transfusions for the halibut, I am just defensive of the patients who honestly need a transfusion. Getting a transfusion unnecessarily is no wiser than refusing one unconditionally.
Maybe we should all seek out doctors who are comfortable with doing bloodless surgery while letting them know that in life/death situtations, we will accept the blood. Could finally get something useful out of our knowledge of the WTs teachings. Have our cake and eat it too.
That seems kind of mercenary of me, doesn't it?
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Pants of Righteousness
Hi Umberto
The story broke in May 2014 as reported in the Sunday Times. The thread at the time was:
The Shannon Farmer referred to in the article is something of a bloodless surgery celebrity in JW world. He wrote this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Your-Body-Choice-Shannon-Farmer/dp/981041708X
The double standard is that the author - a former CO and elder - when dealing with a dieing Witness needing a transfusion, would push the doctrine of abstaining from blood (well, of course there's fractions ...), but are being paid to promote a program that only seeks to restrict the use of blood to one unit at a time.
A bit like abstaining from fornication - unless it's once 'unit' at a time.
Hope this helps
Regards to Adso
Pants
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OrphanCrow
I would hope that whenever possible, all possible preparations are diligently carried out for all patients who anticipate surgery so that blood isn't necessary. When it is given as a bandaid for unskilled surgery, then you will have more issues.
'Bloodless surgery' is not as simple as just going in for surgery and not receiving blood. The process of undergoing 'bloodless' surgery involves different equipment and different procedures than 'ordinary' surgery. In a 'normal' surgical procedure, your blood isn't drained out of you first, your blood isn't taken outside of your body , washed, and then transfused back into you. In normal surgery, you get to keep your blood inside your body while it is happening - in bloodless procedures, you don't. One of the goals of bloodless medicine is to keep the patient alive as long as possible without blood in their bodies.
About Shannon Farmer et al...
Farmer has never declared a conflict of interest during his involvement in blood management programs. Neither did Axel Hoffman or the many other JWs involved in bloodless management programs.
http://traq.blogspot.ca/2014_06_01_archive.html
Australia's National Blood Authority (NBA), a well respected government organization that does much valuable work, appointed Shannon Farmer, a Jehovah's Witness, as the key consumer representative on a government panel developing new transfusion guidelines for Australia's hospitals. Nil inappropriate about that except Mr. Farmer didn't declare
- Formally, or otherwise it seems, that he was a Jehovah's Witness.
- His consultancy work since 2007 to an Austrian business involved in commercial tendering for patient blood management projects around the world.
- Receiving fees for consulting and lecturing from multinational pharmaceutical companies,e.g., J and J.
Fact is they were not declared and at the time of his appointment Farmer was described as "consumer" and "independent consumer advocate". An NBA spokesperson is quoted as saying, "The NBA believes any potential conflict of interest, real or perceived, should be declared."- He's an Adjunct Research Fellow, School of Surgery, at the University of Western Australia, where he's listed as an author on multi-authored papers about blood.
- LinkedIn shows he's an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow Centre for Population Health Research, Curtin University.
- He's apparently an expert on transfusion medicine.
And none of the above profiles even hint that he's consulted for years to Austria's 'Medicine and Economics' business involved in commercial patient blood management projects globally.
How can you not know that someone you appoint to panels developing national blood transfusion guidelines is a member of a religion that forbids transfusion and earns big bucks implementing blood management programs internationally? How can you say, when information comes to light, 'These aren't sufficient conflicts'?
Isn't this equivalent to someone being appointed to a government panel on the future of private laboratories in Alberta (Canada, UK, you name it)- Who is a member of a political party whose policies are pro-private medicine (pro-private everything)?
- Who consults for (perhaps partially owns) a private laboratory consortium bidding for government contracts?
Yet it's hard to discover which degrees he has, where he went to school, or any of the normal qualifications of someone who's an author, lecturer, and expert on TM, with university appointments.Not only is Australia's blood management program spearheaded by prominent JWs, almost all of those involved in bloodless surgery clinics in USA are JWs.
Submitting to 'bloodless' surgical procedures is sort of like going to an abortion clinic run by the pope and managed by prominent Catholics.
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sowhatnow
i tell a dr i prefer none, accept salvage, but if ever id need serious surgery where i might need blood, id donate my own so its there. if im bleeding to death in an accident, idc whose it is. but if im that messed up, i dont want to go on living. -
Finkelstein
The article is bit misleading in that it didn't bring out that new modern surgical procedures used in heart surgery incidences has resulted in less of a need for blood transfusion to be used during the operation and this is the case for many other surgical procedures. This changes of course if complications occur.
Of course the JWS jump on this bit of biased information thinking Aha we don't need BTs after all, its all a needless scam, are no blood doctrine was right all along, thank you Jehovah.
Of course the JWS aren't interested in the information that JWS still die every year for refusing a BT for other medical reasons or that BTs have saved millions of lives since its inception as a medical procedure.