14 YEAR OLD JW GIRL NEEDS BLOOD - CAN YOU HELP (page 2)

Alleymom

Jez ---

The publishers email address is [email protected]

Here is a copy of an email I just sent to that address:

Mark ---

I read about this case at:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/88533/1.ashx

I hope that the attached information is something you can use. Is there any way you could pass this information along to the Supreme Court Judge involved in the trial? This is an editorial in the Journal of Medical Ethics (J Med Ethics 2000;26:299-301 ):
Title: "Refusal of potentially life-saving blood transfusions by Jehovah's Witnesses: should doctors explain that not all JWs think it's religiously required?" by Raanan Gillon
Imperial College School of Medicine, London University
In this issue of the journal "Lee Elder",1 a pseudonymous dissident Jehovah's Witness (JW), previously an Elder of that faith and still a JW, joins the indefatigable Dr Muramoto2-5 (the latter is not a JW) in arguing that even by their own religious beliefs based on biblical scriptures JWs are not required to refuse potentially life-saving blood transfusions. Just as the "official" JW hierarchy has accepted that biblical scriptures do not forbid the transfusion or injection of blood fractions so too JW theology logically can and should permit the transfusion of whole blood when this is medically required.

Few doctors would argue that they should override the adequately autonomous decisions of Jehovah's Witnesses to refuse blood transfusions even if they are likely to die as a result of such transfusions.

However, there is a case to be made for doctors asking such patients to reflect on their potentially fatal refusal of blood and for drawing to these patients' attention the reasoning of members of their own faith that justifies acceptance of potentially life-saving blood transfusions. [... ] rest of article is attached
Note that the editorial refers to an article in the same issue:

1. Elder L. "Why some Jehovah's Witnesses accept blood and conscientiously reject official Watchtower Society blood policy. "Journal of Medical Ethics 2000;26:375-80.Regards,
Marjorie Alley

Alleymom

Fantastic that you emailed the publisher! I think the Vancouver Sun could use some hints about this going on as well. I will email them tomorrow. I wonder if this 14 yr old is in Vancouver as the ruling was handed down there and not Vernon. ???
The Vancouver Sun is much bigger and seems more willing to enter into controversial issues than the wee littl' Morning Star.

Jez ---

When you email them, perhaps you could include the information about the article and the editorial in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Marjorie

mkr32208

Any parent who would do this to their child does not deserve to have children... Sick and Twisted!

Bryan

mkr:

Any parent who would do this to their child does not deserve to have children... Sick and Twisted!

Couldn't have said it better. Bryan Have You Seen My Mother

Alleymom

btt

cyborgVision

go here http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/joint/commttee/j2444.pdf and download this official government's document. In it you'll find great argumentation that kids need to be protected by state if parents being JW make decision that may endanger child's life.

By the way it is a great piece of document 'cause in it you'll see that WT came as one of official NGOs to plead their case in front of Australian senate. JW case starts on the page 124 with usual wt argumentation then senators engage 2 official WT representatives in drilling of their lives at page 126.

johnny cip

BTTT

Alleymom

go here http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/joint/commttee/j2444.pdf and download this official government's document. In it you'll find great argumentation that kids need to be protected by state if parents being JW make decision that may endanger child's life.
By the way it is a great piece of document 'cause in it you'll see that WT came as one of official NGOs to plead their case in front of Australian senate. JW case starts on the page 124 with usual wt argumentation then senators engage 2 official WT representatives in drilling of their lives at page 126.

CyborgVision --- Thanks for the link. Very interesting, indeed. One note, however --- on the link you gave, the JW case starts on page 61, and the grilling starts on page 63. I just copied pp. 61-69 for my files. Marjorie

Alleymom

http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/joint/commttee/j2444.pdf

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA

Official Committee Hansard

JOINT COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

DEFENCE AND TRADE

Reference: Australia's efforts to promote and protect freedom of

religion and belief

FRIDAY, 15 OCTOBER 1999

SYDNEY

BY AUTHORITY OF THE PARLIAMENT

Page 61:

[2.02 p.m.]

MacLEAN, Mr Donald Howard, Director, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia

TOOLE, Mr Vincent Joseph, Legal Officer, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia

CHAIR:

On behalf of the subcommittee I welcome representatives of Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. The subcommittee prefers that all evidence be given in public but should you at any stage wish to give evidence in private you may ask to do so and the committee will give consideration to your request. Although the committee does not require you to give evidence on oath, I should advise you that these hearings are legal proceedings of the parliament and therefore have the same standing as proceedings of the House itself. I invite you to make a short opening statement if you wish and we will then proceed to questions.

Mr MacLean:

I would like to express appreciation for coming before the committee.

Most religions espouse principles of tolerance and morality and thus the free practice of religion can promote stability within a community.The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights show that the international community believes religious freedom to be ofvery considerable importance. Nevertheless, throughout the world religious intolerance continues and is increasing.

As far as Jehovah's Witnesses are concerned, the intolerance is exhibited by both secular authorities and religious groups. So we must, at the outset, say that much of thediscrimination against Jehovah's Witnesses by governments is supported or instigated byother religions. While Jehovah's Witnesses stay clear of politics and do not try to use religious influence to steer or control governments, this is not the case with many major andminor religions.

In our submission we directed attention to some conspicuous examples of discriminationagainst Jehovah's Witnesses. We did so to highlight failings within the systems in which they occur. For example, a parliamentary inquiry into dangerous religious sects in France obtained its information about Jehovah's Witnesses from those who oppose us, and they did not seek or accept information from the Witnesses themselves. Thus the published report was based on misinformation.

We believe that discrimination seldom occurs in a vacuum. Thus, to eradicate religious intolerance, the climate for religious tolerance must first be improved. There also has to be an international and unbiased source of reliable information on religions, on their beliefs and practices.

Religious discrimination and persecution is often based also on fear. Fear is often based on inaccurate information. For example, one hears of the Jonestown mass suicide and the

Page 62:

Waco Texas massacre and assumes that, because Jehovah's Witnesses are zealous in their religious worship, they promote blind loyalty and members would commit suicide.

Despite the guarantees of religious freedom contained in the Constitution of Singapore, Jehovah's Witnesses are under a ban in that country. Their religious and morally up-building literature, including copies of the authorised King James version of the Bible published by the Watchtower Society, and publications that are freely distributed throughout Australia and much of the rest of the world, are considered 'undesirable publications'.

This action by the Singapore government is based on the stand taken by the Witnesses to remain neutral in military and political matters. In most countries, authorities have come to realise that the Jehovah's Witnesses' position in this regard poses no real threat to national security. Individuals have been imprisoned --some have lost their jobs--and the courts have not upheld their rights under Singapore's constitution. So that is Singapore.

Despite the guarantee of freedom of religion found in article 28 of the 1993 Russian constitution, Russia has recently enacted legislation restricting the activity of religions considered to be 'foreign' or 'new'. While Jehovah's Witnesses have been accepted for registration recently as a recognised religion in Russia, attempts have been made to close meetings and disrupt religious activities, and the clergy of the traditional faiths support and vigorously advocate these measures in Russia.

Several criminal investigations have been brought against the Moscow congregation but each investigation has been closed because the allegations were demonstrated to be false.

At this time a civil prosecution is continuing and seems to be putting non-orthodox theological beliefs on trial rather than adhering to the rule of law or allowing freedom of belief in that country.

In France and throughout Europe there is a move to impose crippling taxes on Jehovah's Witnesses. We have been in France now for over a hundred years and we are the third largest Christian religion in that country. The French government is currently attempting to impose a 60 per cent tax on all donations made to Jehovah?s Witnesses. The tax is imposed on no other religious organisation. This action is based on a report which classified Jehovah's Witnesses as not being a religion but rather a sect?and this is the land of liberty, equality and fraternity, as you know.

From time to time we have received support from non-government organisations, particularly in exposing the persecution. We have also received support from the American embassy, the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, and the President's wife, Hillary Clinton. However if any international steps taken by Australia in support of religious freedom are to be truly effective, Australia needs to consider whether it is upholding the principles of religious freedom at home. I just give two examples highlighting something in our submissions to the committee. Firstly, we notice that the present Australian state laws permit blood transfusions to be administered to minors without parental consent and, secondly, we note the discriminatory manner in which adoption laws are applied to Jehovah?s Witnesses in Australia.

Page 63:

Senator SCHACHT: I want to raise this issue that you have raised at great length in your submission on blood transfusion and the role of law in Australia. You say this is an invasion of your religious beliefs. On page 33 of your submission you say:

Jehovah's Witnesses base their stand concerning blood transfusions on the law of God as set out in the Holy Bible.

Can you tell me what part of the Holy Bible deals with blood transfusion?

Mr MacLean: We have the Book of Acts in chapter 15, verses 19, 20, 28 and 29 which talk about blood and the misuse of blood. The first meeting of the newly formed Christian congregation -- what you might term their governing body -- had to make a decision about the Gentiles, the non-Jews, coming into the Christian congregation. The use of blood was not prohibited to them but it was to the Jews, so we had the decision there being made by this group of Christian men that blood was not to be taken. It was equated with fornication and with idolatry, so blood was a prohibited substance to be taken by the Christians.

Senator SCHACHT: Which Holy Bible are we talking about?

Mr MacLean: The King James version or any Bible that we have in this country.

Senator SCHACHT: That was written nearly 400 years ago in the early 17th century. Are you confident that the versions of the Bible going back to 1,600 years before that have the same description as you say the Acts have about blood transfusion?

Mr MacLean: Yes. You will find any translation of the Bible that you could pick up in this country--any modern version or old version --would have the same text exactly.

Senator SCHACHT: The same text?

Mr MacLean: Yes.
Senator SCHACHT: Again, I cannot claim any great knowledge of the Bible, but are you the only Christian church or denomination that has interpreted that section of the Bible to mean that blood transfusion is not allowed?
Mr MacLean: Probably so, yes.

Page 64:

Senator SCHACHT: Do you agree with the legislation that the Australian parliament has put through to ban female genital mutilation and circumcision that is carried out for cultural reasons in countries that are overwhelmingly, but not totally, non-Christian?

Mr MacLean: I think any person in this country would feel that is a very cruel and unnecessary operation.

Senator SCHACHT: Which is life threatening.

Mr MacLean: Yes, very much so.

Senator SCHACHT: Couldn't the absence of a blood transfusion be life threatening as well?

Mr MacLean: We do not view it that way. Perhaps Mr Toole might like to make some comments about that.

Mr Toole: In answer to your question as to whether this has been a standard. If we just remove emotion from the discussion because it is a fairly emotive subject and the newspapers tend to blow it up that way?

Senator SCHACHT: I am just quoting what you have written, not what the newspapers have written.

Mr Toole: What I was mentioning is that the scriptures simply say to abstain from blood. It is not an ambiguous statement. If you go to the doctor and he says, 'Abstain from alcohol', it is not as though what he means is complicated. Jehovah's Witnesses interpret 'abstain from blood' to mean, effectively abstain from blood and have nothing whatever to do with it. To take the point that you raised, I will take you back to a historical quotation from Tertullian. He lived from 160 to 230. He says:

Let your unnatural ways blush before the Christians. We do not even have the blood of animals at our meals for these consist of ordinary food. . . . At the trials of Christians you - that is the pagan Romans? offer them sausages filled with blood. You are convinced, of course, that the very thing with which you try to make them deviate from the right way is unlawful for them. How is it that, when you are confident that they will shudder at the blood of an animal, you believe that they pant eagerly at human blood. The interdict upon blood we shall understand to be much more upon human blood. So effectively what that is saying is that back there one of the ways they used to establish who were Christians was to try to get them to violate the edict on blood. They tried to get people to eat blood sausages et cetera. The point I am making is that this was understood back in the early Christian church to be a prohibition.

Senator SCHACHT: In any of the testaments, did Christ himself use the phrase, 'to abstain from blood'?

page 65

Mr MacLean: Not specifically, no, but he quoted God's law continually hundreds of times including various parts of the law of God which contain this very prominently in it.

Senator SCHACHT: Which law of God is that?
Mr MacLean: That is the old Hebrew law that was given to the Hebrew Jews of which Jesus was, of course, a Jew himself. He was familiar with the laws.
Senator SCHACHT: He was Jewish, of course. He was born a Jew. Back to the Old Testament and the Hebrew view, we should have asked this question when we had the Jewish people before us here before lunch. As far as I am aware, I do not think they ban blood transfusions.
Mr MacLean: No.

Senator SCHACHT: If it was an old Hebrew law, one would have thought it wouldhave had some standing in Jewish practice and theology.

Mr MacLean: We would agree. We wonder why.

Senator SCHACHT: I see. I just want to turn now to the well-documented case from your point of view about children and the complaint that we have laws in Australia in all states giving medical practitioners the right to overrule the parents. Do you not think it is reasonable that, until a child is old enough to make up their own minds and has got some maturity, they should have the right to decide whether they have a blood transfusion which, if they do not have it, might actually mean that they die?

Mr MacLean: Do you mean the child?

Senator SCHACHT: The parents are imposing a view on the child at a very young age when the child has no ability to make their own judgment. I accept that. But surely you should give the child the chance to live long enough so that they can have the maturity of views to make a judgment that if they then choose to follow the views of the Jehovah Witnesses and not have blood transfusion, they make that choice and take the consequences.

For the parents to impose a life or death issue on children who have not yet the ability tothink for themselves, I have to say I find a complete and absolute attack on that child's human rights and their right to live.

Mr Toole: What you are saying? can I be pretty straight?

Senator SCHACHT: You can be as straight as you like. It is under privilege, so say what you like.

Mr Toole: What you are saying effectively starts on a premise that blood is not in itself a dangerous therapy. Medically, that is not necessarily the case. For example, just to quote Dr James Isbister, one of the leading haematologists in this country, quoted in an editorial in the Medical Journal of Australia. He says:

Page 66:

The fact that blood transfusion can be lethal has never been doubted, but the laiety (sic) and many members of the medical profession have thought that the risks related only to the blood group. The long list of potential complications of homologous blood transfusion has been well known for many years and is ever increasing, but the fact that HIV can be transmitted by blood component therapy has taken the medical, nursing and scientific sectors of the health care profession, as well as patients, rapidly up the learning curve. A blood transfusion was previously seen as the gift of life, but the tables have been turned and the general perception now is that bloodless surgery and the avoiding of transfusion may be the gift of life.

All I am saying is that medically there is another side to the story, I am sure, in the light of some of the recent events that we have had even in this country. We have got hundreds of people suing the Red Cross as a result of getting hepatitis from blood transfusions. We have had an instance just recently in Melbourne involving a doctor where, in spite of what he was asked for, a young child tragically received AIDS from an infected blood transfusion.

All I am saying is that anybody who is going to have a blood transfusion in this day and age, whether for themselves or their children, is going to have to do a risk-benefit analysis.

They are going to have to weigh up the benefits as opposed to the potential risks. If you read the submission that came in, particularly the one that we put in with it, it showed that virtually every kind of medical treatment can be done without transfusions. I will just round up my comment by citing a newspaper article written by the Chairman of Urology at Long Island College Hospital in New York. The article is entitled 'Are blood transfusions any longer necessary'?. The author says:

The introduction of bloodless medicine and surgery have brought the issue of blood transfusion into sharper focus. Today blood would probably not be approved as a medication, since it would not fulfill safety criteria of the Food and Drug Administration.

. . . . . . . . .

The lack of hard data on the benefit of transfusion has added to the confusion surrounding transfusion practice. The benefit is so questionable that many surgeons have adopted a philosophy of "transfusion avoidance" not only for medical but also for legal reasons.

He concludes by saying:

It is quite possible that in the very near future transfusion will be eliminated altogether.

. . . . . . . . .

Transfusion is not only costly and dangerous; it simply does not provide the highest quality of care that patients

deserve.

So our position basically is this. We do not have a blood transfusion for ourselves or our families, because the Bible says to abstain from blood. It is a religious position we take. But for people that are prepared to go out and do some research medically they find there is an awful lot of evidence that makes it make sense medically. I guess that is the reason why the doctor in Melbourne said what he said. I finish with a quotation from the Bulletin of 10 August:

Why did you have concerns about blood being made available?

Page 67:

My concerns about blood donation arise as a result of my training. Especially as a surgeon, one is constantly doing a risk-benefit analysis on behalf of the patient and trying to choose the right course. As far as transfusion is concerned, I know that there is a risk of infection, and I know that any blood bank has to trade off cost versus benefit in searching for viruses. I am aware how slow public health authorities seem to move in keeping up with the latest information on HIV. Blood banks are inevitably reactive, responding, sometimes slowly, to what other researchers have found, and sometimes choosing not to adopt the most recent advances out of costs restraints. With this knowledge it is only natural to have a healthy scepticism.

Are your concerns shared by the larger medical community?

The reason . . . why the blood bank and the Royal Children?s Hospital seem a little defensive is that they would

probably agree. I think most parents who are doctors would have done exactly the same thing . . .

All I am saying is that a lot of people, for medical reasons, would choose that. We are not

saying in our recommendation that the law should not exist. What we have said is that there may well be circumstances arise where it does become an absolute life and death issue. We have said that in those circumstances that is the way the law should be framed. In its present form, the law is not framed that way and it allows an invasion of the family and an overruling of the principles of that family in circumstances that really do not call for that at all. It is in that sense that the laws are quite discriminatory.

Senator SCHACHT: You have quoted two different doctors. I presume if I rang the AMA and we sought the AMA?s view or the view of the medical profession in various areas we would probably get 20 doctors saying the opposite. I presume when the legislation was brought down through state parliaments it was done very much with the support of the medical profession in Australia. I do not think members of parliament would have stepped in in a lively way to move such legislation without medical discussion and consultation.

CHAIR: I think you have put your question and, whether you agree or not, we have had the response. I suggest we move on.

Senator SCHACHT: I just want to say that I think the legislation actually protects the child's human rights and I think that the state has done the correct thing.

Mr HOLLIS:My apologies for coming in a little late; I was delayed downstairs. I am fairly ignorant about Jehovah?s Witnesses. Could you just give me a little bit of a thumbnail sketch of roughly the numbers in Australia and the activities you engage in in Australia.

Mr MacLean: We have currently in the vicinity of 100,000 associates in the country. I came from Canada myself 51 years ago. When I arrived here there were about 3,500 active witnesses. It has grown very much in that time. We have 760 congregations in the various states. We have annual conventions. We will have one at the superdome here at the end of this month. There will be about 15,000 here in Sydney. We just had about 20,000 up in Brisbane and over in Perth last weekend another 12,000. We have these annually. Our work is involved in the public ministry. As you probably all know -- you have been visited by one of our people, no doubt, at some time in the past--

CHAIR: Two, as I recall. Usually two.

Page 68:

Mr MacLean: Usually two, that is right. Our objective in doing that is to start Bible studies with people in their homes if possible. We leave literature. You have seen this magazine, Awake!, I am sure, lots of times. We left a copy of that one on religious intolerance with you. The Watchtower is published now in 135 languages, about 20 million copies every issue, so it is widely read throughout the world. We print them here at our place in Ingleburn. That is a little bit of our work.

Mr HOLLIS: You are not vegetarian, are you?

Mr MacLean: No, no. We have no dietary laws as such.

Senator SCHACHT: You have never eaten blood.

Mr MacLean: Just blood, that is all. We do not feed on blood; that is right.

Senator SCHACHT: But you eat red meat.

Mr MacLean: Nothing that has blood in it do we eat. We avoid that very much?like blood sausage.

Senator SCHACHT: So you do not eat your steaks rare then.

Mr MacLean: There again, you are coming into a fine line. The Bible says to drain the blood. It should be drained. We do that.

Mr HOLLIS: The point I was trying to make before Senator Schacht intervened is this: you said you had no dietary laws, and I accept that, but I was interested to ask if you were vegetarian, because it would seem to me --I am not an expert in the field --that unless you treat meat specifically it must contain an element of blood.

Mr MacLean: Yes. Obviously, yes. You do not spin-dry it or something like that.

Mr HOLLIS: You said you had no dietary laws. You do not treat the meat in a special way? You go and buy your meat the same as I go and buy meat?

Mr MacLean: We guarantee that it is bled before we touch it. Whether it is chickens or beef, or whatever it might be, it has to be properly bled. We have beef cattle on our property as a matter of fact, and that is supervised very carefully.

Mr HOLLIS: So you have a special butchery?

Mr MacLean: No, it is done by registered butcheries and so on. But we are very conscious of the fact that it must be bled.

Mr Toole: It does not have any special kind of bleeding; it is just bled as in the abattoirs. That is all the Bible says had to be done --blood poured out on the ground. God's people back in ancient times were permitted to eat the flesh. In many ways we are pretty normal, but we obey the law when it says "Abstain from blood".

Page 69:

Mr HOLLIS:That is all, thank you.

Senator PAYNE:I have one frivolous question and one serious question. I am taken by the reference on page 48 of your submission, or the part of your submission relating to adoption questions, that Jehovah?s Witnesses are more qualified to be adoptive parents because they do not participate in dangerous sports. Is that a universal application to Jehovah's Witnesses --that nobody boxes, bungee jumps, hang-glides, et cetera? That is the frivolous one, you will be relieved to know. It is just an interesting thing to have in a submission, and I am slightly curious. I suppose golf could be dangerous.

Mr MacLean: We view our lives as something dedicated to God. In other words, we are doing the will of God, we consider, when we give that dedication and have the baptism as we engage in. Therefore, what we do with our lives is very important. We have no right to just on whim or impulse jump off a bridge or go bungee jumping and engage in very risky sports like you mentioned. Anything of that nature is abuse of our lives, we consider, so we try to preserve our lives in the service of God. That is the basic principle there.

The Watchtower testimony concludes on page 78.

See http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/joint/commttee/j2444.pdf for text of entire proceedings.

14 YEAR OLD JW GIRL NEEDS BLOOD - CAN YOU HELP

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