Posts by OrphanCrow

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

TheRebel: With modern day technology and a modern day application, I wouldn't be disappointed if some threads got locked.

But...if that happened, some people would lose their purpose in life

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

vidiot: I wonder if this'll ever have a chance at coming back and biting them on the ass?

It might. Maybe someday the world will wake up and realize that blood management guidelines are being set by the same religion that promoted radioactive belts and Abrahm's electronic box.

The next part of the Seeber/Shander historical account of blood management addresses the legal problems that the JWs encountered when refusing blood:

Refusing blood transfusions on religious grounds was
not easy. Repeatedly, patients were physically forced to
take donor blood, using such high - handed methods as
incapacitation by court order, strapping patients to the
bed (even with the help of police officers), and secretly
adding sedatives to a patient’s infusion.

And that is the reason that is used as to why the JWs entered the realm of medical/scientific justification for their blood refusal - "refusing blood transfusions of religious grounds was not easy". No doubt it was not easy to convince the courts that child sacrifice was still considered to be a "religious" activity. What the authors have left out of this WT flavored account of 'persecution' is the hundreds and hundreds of court cases where the courts had to step in and save a child's life because the parent's believed in child sacrifice.

This next sentence identifies the very beginnings of the HLC (long before it was known as such):

In the early 1960s,
representatives of Jehovah ’ s Witnesses started visiting
physicians to explain the reasons why transfusions were
refused by the Witness population.

The authors then relate the development of the HLC - which I will return to - but for now, I want to skip to the part that keeps this in chronological order - the part that talks about Denton Cooley. That, too, was happening in the early 60s.

Denton Cooley was a world renowned heart surgeon - the first to do open heart surgery and the first to transplant an artificial heart. The authors have put Cooley's contribution after talking about events in the late 70s to make it appear like Cooley was responding to the JWs' efforts to 'educate' the medical profession:

Among the first to rise to the challenge was the heart
surgeon Denton Cooley of Texas. In the early 1960s, his
team devised methods to treat Witness patients. He
described the techniques in an article, “ Open heart
surgery in Jehovah ’ s Witnesses, ” published in 1964 in The
American Journal of Cardiology . In 1977, Cooley reported
his experiences with more than 500 patients [2] .
Cooley ’ s example was followed by many other courageous
physicians.

The impression that Seeber/Shander gives the reader is that Dr. Cooley devised his methods in order to treat JWs. That is not true.

Dr. Cooley devised a no blood prime method in order to treat everybody. The JWs just happened to be able to benefit from a procedure that was meant to be bloodless all along. Cooley devised a bloodless method in order to do open heart surgery on all his patients - he did not "rise to the challenge" put forth by a group with invented high risk factors. Dr. Cooley rose to the challenge of how to do open heart surgery on everyone - a procedure that needed the heart to be free of blood.

In his memoirs 1000,000 Hearts, Dr. Cooley describes his early efforts with using a blood prime to start the heart and lung machine in order to divert the blood away from the heart (pg 107):

For the earliest open heart operations using an elaborate system with a Gibbon console. blood infused with heparin was used to "prime" the system, as with any other pump. On the morning of surgery, blood had to be collected from ten or twelve donors of the same blood type. This greatly complicated the procedures. Often, even though we started to collect the blood before dawn, we didn't get enough matching units to start a procedure until the afternoon or evening. Although the red cells were cross-matched, the other blood components couldn't be tested. Once the individual units were mixed together, minor incompatibilities sometimes produced adverse reactions. This problem was originally described by Dr. Howard Gadboys and Dr. Robert Litwak, who believed that it could be solved by using a non-blood prime. They had used this method successfully in dogs.

So Dr. Cooley started using a non blood primer in his open heart surgeries:

In 1961 my associate Dr. Atthur Beall and I began to perform dog experiments with a prime consisting of 5 percent dextrose in distilled water, and we were impressed with the results. We began to use this solution instead of blood to prime the pump for open heart operations in our patients. Before long, my team and I were doing eight or ten opeartions a day, whereas institutions that still used a blood prime did only one or two operations a week. By August 1962 we had operated on one hundred patients using this technique, which not only greatly facilitated open heart surgery but also eliminated blood-borne illnesses. Our simplified methods were a major advance. Within a year we'd done 241 cases using a non-blood prime. I believe that my popularizing this technique silenced the remaining critics of open heart surgery and led to the rapid acceleration in its growth. For this reason. I think it is one of my most important contributions. Although others, including Dr. Nazih Zuhdi and Dr, Allen Greer, had used a similar technique in a few cases, no one had pushed to make it an acceptable method.

Dr. Cooley does not describe his motivation for using a no blood prime as "rising to the challenge" of operating on Jehovah's Witnesses in response to the JWs setting up visiting committees. That didn't happen. The JWs had nothing at all to do with Dr. Cooley's innovation. Nothing. But, they were able to take advantage of his brilliance:

The use of a bloodless prime also allowed me to pioneer open heart surgery on patients of the Jehovah's Witness faith. Jehovah's Witnesses refuse to receive blood transfusions or any other blood products because of their interpretation of several verses in the Bible. Refusal of blood places them at high risk for any surgical procedure in which serious blood loss could be an issue. Unless the operation is done quickly and precisely, the patient could bleed to death. Shortly after beginning to use a non-blood priming solution, I did the world's first open heart surgery on a Jehovah's Witness. That was in May 1962, and within a year I had done six more cases.* In no instance was blood given before, during, or after these operations. the fact that I could operate very quickly meant that less blood was lost, so my cases were more likely to be successful. For many years I was the only surgeon willing to operate on Jehovah's Witnesses.**
* My first seven Jehovah's Witness cases are described in detail in The American Journal of Cardiology, vol. 13 (1964), pp. 779-781.
** My team and I would eventually operate on more than 1,500 Jehovah's Witnesses

This is the only place in Cooley's memoirs that he mentions the Jehovah's Witnesses. Cooley went on to perform 100,000 heart surgeries and the JWs only made up a small part of that monumental feat. Almost all of Cooley's open heart procedures were bloodless - it was the nature of the procedure itself - it had nothing to do with the JW blood refusal. Nothing. Cooley's methods were not a response to the JWs- they were a response to his profession. The JWs have used Cooley's innovations to promote their no blood ideology. They have tried to take credit for something that are not entitled to.
I have a little bit more to say about Dr. Cooley and the JWs' attempt to ride his coat tails but I need to take a break...

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: Shannon or Shander?

Both of them.

Shander is the doctor face and Shannon Farmer is the WT face. Farmer shadows Hofmann - they are blood buddies

SABM/NATA guys - the unholy alliance.

Who is this fellow? Prof. Zacharowski. Is he a JW?

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

jwfacts: No one questions that there is danger with blood transfusions. A Doctor's goal is to provide a transfusion when it is less dangerous than not having one. JW's have been sacrificial lambs, and for no justifiable reason.

Exactly

That is why it is important to have accurate information about what the real risks are:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Blood_Transfusions:_How_Safe

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.