*** w69 6/1 327 Godly Respect for Life and Blood ***
"If a doctor were to tell you to abstain from alcohol, would that mean simply that you should not take it through your mouth but that you could transfuse it directly into your veins?"
If a doctor told a patient to abstain from alcohol then that patient should avoid unhealthy alcohol consumption whether by mouth or any other means. But this is not a prohibition on infusing alcohol intravenously. If this alcoholic patient suffered ethylene glycol poisoning (antifreeze) his doctor might prescribe intravenous ethyl alcohol as a therapy to mitigate or completely overcome the effects of the poisoning.
So it is false to think that because a doctor tells a patient to abstain from alcohol that it would always be inappropriate or contrary to the doctor's orders to have alcohol administered intravenously to the same patient. Unhealthy consumption of alcohol is relevantly dissimilar to healthy uses of intravenous alcohol administration. When the WTS uses the question above they consistently fail to inform readers that sometimes alcohol is used therapeutically to save life, even for alcoholics. Because most readers are unaware of this therapy most never realize what a hoax the question employs.
When readers know of and understand this therapy then they are positioned to understand why the question posed by the WTS meaningless to the subject. With the doctor's directive to abstain from alcohol it is imperative for the patient to understand exactly what the doctor requires by the statement. The doctor does not require an abstention from a life saving infusion of alcohol, but he does require a total abstention from drinking alcohol or otherwise using it in an unhealthy way.
Marvin Shilmer