Posts by OrphanCrow

48

"Basics of Blood Management" by Dr. Petra Seeber and Dr. Aryeh Shander - Inaccuracies and Myth

by OrphanCrow in

patient blood management arose out of bloodless medicine and alternatives to blood transfusions.

pbm has been accepted as the standard of care in australia and has been implemented into the health care systems of other countries such as canada.

a prominent promoter of pbm has been aryeh shander from englewood hospital in new jersey.

OrphanCrow

Room215: Any reference to "Basics of Blood Management" as it applies to JWs is a disingenuous misnomer.

For sure.

The WT has done nothing but manage blood for the past 70 years - they have controlled the blood of millions. The WT has decided how the JWs' blood should be "managed". On threat of eternal death.

To get back to talking about that textbook - "Basics of Blood Management" - the origin of the book is clear. It is the voice of the WT's Hospital Information Services. The arm of the WT organization that has, over the years, arisen out of alliances between medical practitioners and JWs.

WonderofYou - Thank you for all that additional information on Dr. Seeber.

Seeber - a JW doctor - and Shander - clearly aligned with the the HLC. Authors of this book.

The chapter that discloses the origins of the current blood management movement is Chapter One: History and Organization of Blood Management

This chapter presents the view that the Jehovah's Witnesses are the foundation of the bloodless movement. The chapter is full of inaccuracies, mostly in the form of what has been left out. The information that isn't presented is sometimes the most telling.

If I were to re-title this chapter, it would be "WT Revisionist History 101".

Like all good stories, it weaves the truth around the holes left through omission.

First sentence:

Blood management has evolved from humble beginnings into a viable, rapidly - developing medical specialty

Truth. Blood management now has a stranglehold on countries all over the world. Look at Europe and Australia. And many more, especially developing countries

Rapidly developing - yes...the search for the holy grail -artificial blood - is always active. Blood management is part of the biotech industry...a volatile marketplace

Next sentence:

Its development was initiated by the wish of Jehovah’ s Witnesses for a transfusion - free treatment and has been shaped by influences coming from transfusion medicine and the military’ s experiences.

So the position of the JWs (notice that it doesn't say the WT - the organization that demands the JWs follow their blood doctrine) is made clear - the JWs founded, through their wishes, the blood management movement.

"Shaped by influences coming from transfusion medicine" is truth. Without blood transfusion technology...there would be no autologous blood transfusions - which is what bloodless surgery is. Bloodless medicine is built on the back of blood technology

"...the military's experience". Here...let me fix that one. It should read "...the military's investments."

Next sentence:

Blood management has today been introduced into mainstream medicine.

Yes. We know.

The WT has finally managed to make the leap into mainstream medicine - from its "humble beginnings" when it promoted all sorts of quack cures and fraudulent medical advice...to now. An evolution has occurred

The next few paragraphs in this chapter deal with objectives and definitions. I am going to skip that part for now and go to "A Brief History":

The term “ bloodless medicine ” is often associated with the belief of Jehovah’ s Witnesses that they should refrain from the use of blood, therefore ruling out the option of blood transfusion. The essence of bloodless medicine, and lately, blood management, however, is not restricted to the beliefs of a religious group. To get a better understanding as to what bloodless medicine and blood management mean, let us go back to the roots of these disciplines.

And the following will be what the Hospital Information Services wants the blood management world to believe (through the voice of a JW doctor/author):

One is not completely wrong to attribute the origin of the term “ bloodless medicine ” to the endeavor of Jehovah ’ s Witnesses to receive treatment without resorting to donor blood transfusion. Their attitude toward the sanctity of blood greatly influences their view of blood transfusion. This was described as early as 1927 in their journal The Watchtower (December 15, 1927). Although the decision to refuse blood transfusion is a completely religious one, the Witnesses have frequently used scientific information about the side effects of donor blood transfusion to convince their physicians that their decision is a reasonable one and is corroborated by scientific evidence. The booklet entitled Blood, Medicine and the Law of God (published in 1961) explained the Witnesses’ religious stand, but also addressed issues such as transfusion reactions, transfusion - related syphilis, malaria, and hepatitis.

The sins of omission are crimes of commission.

The author(s) of this textbook know very well that blood transfusions were not banned by the WT prior to mid-1945.

This historical account is heavily biased - it places the full responsibility of blood refusal on the shoulders of JWs themselves - it never once addresses the WT's role in setting the restrictive blood policies and then demanding strict adherence to those dictates.

Blame the victim - the victims of the WT's blood policy

33

How Dangerous are Blood Transfusions really?

by TheWonderofYou in

this is a report about the successful implementation of the patientbloodmanagent in germany and prof. zacharowski as well as the business trip of his life with shocking facts about transfusions in his bag.. http://screenart.tv/portfolio/gefaehrliche-bluttransfusionen.

this year 2016 president obama and vice biden awarded german physicians prof. kai zacharowski with humanitarian award for patient safety.

the patient safety movement foundation set the goal to massively reduce the number of preventable deaths of hospital patients worldwide by 2020.

OrphanCrow

WonderofYou...is Hans Gombotz a JW?

Or has he just performed bloodless procedures on a whole lot of JWs? Is his affiliation with the bloodless JWs (Hofmann et al) more than just a mutual medical interest? Is he one of the many JW doctors that the WT refers to?

I seem to remember seeing Shannon Farmer's name attached to Austrian BM activities. He sort of disappeared after the Australian publicity. I think he hangs out with the European crew - he would be Hofmann's shadow

33

How Dangerous are Blood Transfusions really?

by TheWonderofYou in

this is a report about the successful implementation of the patientbloodmanagent in germany and prof. zacharowski as well as the business trip of his life with shocking facts about transfusions in his bag.. http://screenart.tv/portfolio/gefaehrliche-bluttransfusionen.

this year 2016 president obama and vice biden awarded german physicians prof. kai zacharowski with humanitarian award for patient safety.

the patient safety movement foundation set the goal to massively reduce the number of preventable deaths of hospital patients worldwide by 2020.

OrphanCrow

How dangerous are blood transfusions....really?

Actually, they are one of the safest medical procedures that a person can have.

Blood management - the control of the world's blood supply - is simply blood politics. Politics fueled by economics.

Surgical alternatives to blood transfusions are blood transfusions - the transfusion of a person's own blood (*to add - and the transfusion of synthetic fluids). The ideology behind bloodless procedures, and what underpins blood management, is that a person can become contaminated by another person's blood - bloodless procedures supposedly keep a person's blood clean and pure.

Blood management is an ideology

Blood politics

48

"Basics of Blood Management" by Dr. Petra Seeber and Dr. Aryeh Shander - Inaccuracies and Myth

by OrphanCrow in

patient blood management arose out of bloodless medicine and alternatives to blood transfusions.

pbm has been accepted as the standard of care in australia and has been implemented into the health care systems of other countries such as canada.

a prominent promoter of pbm has been aryeh shander from englewood hospital in new jersey.

OrphanCrow

Thanks Wifi.

Halfbanana and Vidiot, I think you are both right.

There is a mutually beneficial relationship between the blood management world and the JWs.

The world of blood management/bloodless medicine and the Hospital Information Services of the WT have a symbiotic relationship that has developed over the past several decades. I will examine that relationship later but for now, it is safe to say that when a person hears the JWs talk about all the doctors and health professionals that the HLC has groomed over the years, both Dr. Seeber and Dr. Shander have tight connections to the WT 'alternative to blood transfusions' camp.

When this alliance, between health care professionals and the WT's HLC network, made a big push publicly, back in the 90s, as an excited promotion into bloodless medicine as the next frontier in medical care - the "golden standard of care" - came up against road blocks, it changed its direction and purpose.

For example, back in the early 2000s, there were problems with hetastarch. And then the Hemopure trials were stopped. What was to be a bloodless era became, through financial considerations, blood "management".

The WT's blood cult has evolved through the years, becoming what it must to stay viable. With the result that this alliance - the bloodless doctors and the HLC/WT - now has considerable influence in certain countries. Australia is one and European countries are in the BM crosshairs with NATA playing a big role in trying to get PBM adopted as the 'standard of care' throughout Europe. Axel Hofmann, Shannon Farmer's friend, is seriously involved in that project.

And, of course, the presence of blood management promotions in developing countries is a big thing right now.

$$$$$$ to be made

48

"Basics of Blood Management" by Dr. Petra Seeber and Dr. Aryeh Shander - Inaccuracies and Myth

by OrphanCrow in

patient blood management arose out of bloodless medicine and alternatives to blood transfusions.

pbm has been accepted as the standard of care in australia and has been implemented into the health care systems of other countries such as canada.

a prominent promoter of pbm has been aryeh shander from englewood hospital in new jersey.

OrphanCrow

I want to give a bit more background information on these two authors before I move on to a couple points that their textbook raises.

Dr. Petra Seeber. She is a Jehovah's Witness doctor from Germany. He husband is a JW doctor as well - Dr. Matthias Lucas. They are the doctors who headed up the team to Haiti for disaster relief with the JW organization AidAfrique*, and they operate an Institute for Blood Management in Germany.

*I think that Wifibandit has a newspaper article archived, from Germany, that describes Dr. Seeber and Dr. Lucas' trip to Haiti...I will check. It is in pdf format.

Aryeh Shander. He is the doctor that keeps coming up whenever bloodless surgery and/or blood management is being talked about, especially in connection with the JWs. I have written a bit about him already, most notably his connection both to the WT's HLC and the US defense department concerning trauma research using blood alternatives.

To realize the impact that this particular doctor has on the world's blood supply, it is useful to know how far his reach extends. His reach goes far beyond his home base of the United States (Englewood).

Dr. Aryeh Shander attended the World Health Organization's Global Forum for Blood Safety: Patient Blood Management, March 2011, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

http://www.who.int/bloodsafety/events/gfbs_01_pbm/en/

I am not sure which organization that Dr. Sander was representing at this United nations forum, but he does have affiliation with these 3 societies that were listed as "...key international nongovernmental and professional organizations associated with the clinical use of blood":

http://www.who.int/bloodsafety/events/gfbs_01_pbm_concept_paper.pdf?ua=1

Medical Society for Patient Blood Management (MSBM),

Network for Advancement of Transfusion Alternatives (NATA),

Society for the Advancement for Blood Management (SABM)

Shander could very well be affiliated with other societies that were represented, but we also know that these three societies have strong and unmistakable links to the Hospital Information Services of the WT. Each one of these blood management societies have members that are HLC people. And JW doctors and JW nurses as well.

At the 2011 WHO conference in Dubai, Dr. Shander had the role of introducing Blood Management:

http://www.who.int/bloodsafety/events/gfbs_01_pbm_draft_pow.pdf?ua=1

Session 1: Patient Blood Management (PBM) - Concept and Definition
Introduction, Rationale and Overview of PBM - Dr Aryeh Shander

When Dr. Shander spoke of the rationale underlying the principles of blood management, I wonder if he including an overhead and explanation of the illustration from his textbook that so simply and clearly shows that blood management is founded on "Holy Scriptures"?

48

"Basics of Blood Management" by Dr. Petra Seeber and Dr. Aryeh Shander - Inaccuracies and Myth

by OrphanCrow in

patient blood management arose out of bloodless medicine and alternatives to blood transfusions.

pbm has been accepted as the standard of care in australia and has been implemented into the health care systems of other countries such as canada.

a prominent promoter of pbm has been aryeh shander from englewood hospital in new jersey.

OrphanCrow

Scully: ....If this is coming out of the US

The textbook Basics of Blood Management, was published by John Wiley & Sons, an American publishing company with worldwide locations.

Dr. Petra Seeber lives in Germany - she is a Jehovah's Witness.

Aryeh Shander is an American doctor who is one of the founding members of SABM - the Society for the Advancement of Blood Management. He is based in New Jersey - Englewood Hospital.

The SABM boasts PBM locations in 4 countries:

United States, Australia, Canada and Korea.

The parent organization of SABM is a European organization - NATA - the Network for the Advancement of Patient Blood Management, Haemostasis and Thrombosis (formerly the Network for the Advancement of Transfusion Alternatives), formed in 1998.

48

"Basics of Blood Management" by Dr. Petra Seeber and Dr. Aryeh Shander - Inaccuracies and Myth

by OrphanCrow in

patient blood management arose out of bloodless medicine and alternatives to blood transfusions.

pbm has been accepted as the standard of care in australia and has been implemented into the health care systems of other countries such as canada.

a prominent promoter of pbm has been aryeh shander from englewood hospital in new jersey.

OrphanCrow

Patient Blood Management arose out of bloodless medicine and alternatives to blood transfusions. PBM has been accepted as the standard of care in Australia and has been implemented into the health care systems of other countries such as Canada.

A prominent promoter of PBM has been Aryeh Shander from Englewood Hospital in New Jersey. Shander, along with a German Jehovah's Witness doctor, Petra Seeber, authored a textbook for use in educating and training blood management professionals - "Basics of Blood Management" 2012 second edition.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9781118338070

This textbook, rather that being titled "Basics of Blood Management" would be better titled "How to Promote WT Doctrine as Medical Care". The introduction concerning the history of blood management is full of inaccuracies and I will attempt to get to some of those later, but, in the meantime, I want to present what principle underpins everything that this textbook puts forth as medical knowledge.

On page 285, chapter 20, Law, Ethics, Religion, and Blood Management is introduced with this statement:

This chapter deals with the principles and laws needed to make sound decisions in blood
management.

Under the heading Principles as a basis for decision-making in blood management, we learn what principle it is that the world of blood management is governed by:

A body of principles and regulations governs everyday
decision - making in medicine, and quite a few of them
relate to blood management. Picturing these as a pyramid
(Figure 20.1 ), we see that one set of principles and regulations
builds on another one. The very basis for these
regulations is found in the Holy Scriptures, as I. Taylor
wrote: “ The completeness and consistency of its morality
is the peculiar praise of the ethics which the Bible has
taught. ” Building on the Bible ’ s teachings and the in - built
human conscience, ethics developed which — as a
science — describes human duties. As a subset of such
ethics, human rights were determined and eventually formulated
in writing. Human rights obviously apply also
to humans who are sick. Their rights, namely, patients ’
rights, are based on human rights and specify these to
apply in the situation sick persons find themselves in.
Charters and bills dealing with patients ’ rights go another
step further and give detailed guidance. As such, they help
government and non - government institutions to integrate
patients ’ rights into their legislation or codes by
adjusting them to the unique situation in the country or
their field of work, respectively.

The image used to illustrate this principle - the Biblical basis for blood management:

Blood management - the 'standard of care' that is promoted and adopted by entire countries like Australia - a Bible based approach to medical care. A bible based approach for secular medicine practice.

Well done, Watchtower.

6

“Care Plan for Women in Labour Refusing Blood Transfusion”

by wifibandit in

september 3, 2016 to all bodies of elders re: care plan simplification.

outline for discussion of care plan with publisher hid-cp-otln.

care plan for women in labour refusing blood transfusion hid-cp-gh jan 2011. .

OrphanCrow

Thank you for making these documents available, Wifi, and thanks to Anon for the leak.

There is so much I could say about these documents - what they say and what they don't say. I guess I will start with the most glaring things that they don't say.

The WT/JW documents do not say anything at all about the increased rate of death that the pregnant woman will be facing simply because she is listening to their "spiritual" counsel. The JW woman is not told the magnitude and reality of how her blood refusal will increase risk of death.

In the Awake! article "Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies", the writer(s) include this comment:

According to figures released in
October 2007, one woman dies
nearly every minute—536,000
a year—because of problems
associated with pregnancy.
—United Nations Population Fund

That quote is included in the section addressing "problems in pregnancy". Nowhere in the article, though, does it address the number one problem for JW women - the one biggest risk factor: their refusal to take a blood transfusion.

The risk of death due to complications in pregnancy for JW women is magnified when compared to the general population. There are several medical studies that have addressed the increased risk of death in the JW maternal population and of note, a 2007 Netherlands study had this to say:

Women who are Jehovah's witnesses are at a six times increased risk for maternal death, at a 130 times increased risk for maternal death because of major obstetric haemorrhage and at a 3.1 times increased risk for serious maternal morbidity because of obstetric haemorrhage, compared to the general Dutch population.

The "Care Plan" that these uneducated elders, some of them janitors and window washers, that they are given to "discuss" the care of a pregnant woman. This care plan lists, in medical jargon, the options that this woman will be facing - the decisions that will be a "conscience" matter for her to make. But, the one choice that she is NOT given anywhere is the choice to receive red blood cells - the one part of the blood that could save her life.

And, none of these noblood options that the elders will be discussing with the pregnant woman deal with the possible risks of accepting them. The options are presented as risk free - the risk is invisible to the woman making her "conscious choice".

Another item of note is that the WT care plan doesn't bother to say that recombinant erythropoietin contains a blood product:

...it is important to acknowledge that all formulations of recombinant erythropoietin in the United States contain albumin, a blood product that is not accepted by many members of the sect. Thus, this pertinent point should be emphasized when counseling a Jehovah's Witness patient.*

*from Management of pregnancy in the Jehovah's Witness

Also from that article:

Appropriate counseling is critical and should begin at the initial visit so that the patient has ample time to learn about these options and to discuss them within her community. The patient should be counseled at least once in the absence of any family members or acquaintances. This step ensures that the wishes expressed by the patient are genuine and are her own beliefs. In fact, confidentiality must be emphasized, and it should be clearly explained to the patient that her wishes, including acceptance of a blood transfusion, would remain confidential.

I would be interested to know what the author of the above would say if they knew what kind of discussion "within her community" was taking place and what kind of documents were actually being used.

I feel so sorry for pregnant JW women - to be pregnant (probably really young, too) and have to discuss your pregnancy with men. Personal, private medical information being discussed...with men. Who are holding Bibles in their hands. Who have no medical knowledge. Who will never be pregnant themselves. How horrible for those women

4

Cart Witnessing in Hong Kong

by scratchme1010 in

jw
friends

i was away for a few weeks since i was on a nice vacation in thailand, hong kong and macau.

during my vacationi saw several jws in carts standing by different parts of the cities i visited.. i hong king, however, i noticed that they were a lot more and in a lot more places where i wouldn't think i would see jws with their carts.

they were at the entrance of men's rooms (and not by women's rooms) in public and (what i imagine is) private property (entrances of public transportation places and shopping malls).

OrphanCrow

Scratchme, Hong Kong has a history of street vendors that is not seen on mainland China.

The "handover" from British rule back to Chinese rule only happened in 1997 - less that 20 years ago. Mainland China - where Macau is located (Canton) - had been under Communist rule since at least the early 50s. The laws against street vending on the mainland were established under Communist dictates. In Hong Kong, the history of prolific and uncontrolled street vending still impacts local ordinances and the enforcement of them.

The JWs cart witnessing's visibilty and aggressiveness, in Hong Kong, is simply part of the culture of street vending that Hong Kong has inherited from its history

583

What is the purpose of life?

by slimboyfat in

while reading the magazines the other day it occurred to me that jws never really had a very good answer to that question.

because it was aimed at young people and it said something along the lines, "if you believe in god you have a purpose, but if you don't believe in god your life has no purpose or meaning".

i think that is a faulty analysis of the situation.

OrphanCrow

JM: Because our rational soul, responsible to our reasoning, was created directly by God to reflect his image.
And our rational minds hate paradoxes. Every system of thought created by humans tries to avoid paradoxes. So it's a very well established universal trait in human reasoning.
Doesn't matter if someone is trying to make a good or evil system of thought. Paradoxes will be avoided by both sides.

It sounds to me like you are describing a process whereby 'God' has been created in man's image...

And by the way...belief in such a god as you describe requires 'faith', not rationality