Lee: Hopefully, Watchtower H.I.S. is paying attention, and gets this information out asap.
Tranexamic acid has been used fairly often to reduce bleeding in JW maternal patients - they were the first it was used on. The HLC has been promoting it for many years - the 2001 "Helping Hands" manual contains studies that date in the 90s that include tranexamic acid as one of the techniques used to reduce blood loss.
Page 429 of Part 5 of Helping Hands of Blood Conservation Techniques, May 2001 lists tranexamic as a hemostatic agent.
Google Scholar lists numerous papers that have been published with JW patients and the course of treatment includes tranexamic acid.
Here is one that was published in 2010:
Tarek Samir Arab, MBChB, Ahmad Bakr Al-Wazzan, MBChB, Ken Maslow, MD FRCSC Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg MB
Tranexamic has been around for many years (it was discovered in 1962) and the Jehovah's Witness population has been one of the first that it was used on.
By 2008, the administration of tranexamic was routinely being used for postpartum bleeding in Jehovah's Witness women. It was the HLC who promoted the use of tranexamic acid in JW women as a treatment to help with postpartum bleeding.
However, it was still unclear if tranexamic acid was effective in treating postpartum hemorrhage in the general population. So, in 2010, a world wide trial was launched:
WORLD MATERNAL ANTIFIBRINOLYTIC TRIAL
It will be the results of the WOMAN trial that will have prompted this latest news release. This is yet another feather in the WTS' cap when it comes to boasting how the Jehovah's Witnesses have improved medicine.
But we will never know how many Jehovah's Witness women died (and still die) from postpartum hemorrhage when the tranexamic acid wasn't (isn't) as effective as the best treatment for bleeding - blood itself. In the WOMAN trial, the participants still had the option to have blood when needed - the study was designed to measure blood loss reduction - it was not designed for tranexamic acid being used because blood cannot be.
Tranexamic acid helps to reduce blood loss - it doesn't replace blood.
*to add - from the article in the OP:
It has taken a long time to show that the drug does work in the context it was designed for. Professor Ian Roberts from the London School, who co-led the study, said: “The researchers who invented tranexamic acid more than 50 years ago hoped it would reduce deaths from postpartum haemorrhage, but they couldn’t persuade obstetricians at the time to conduct a trial. Now we finally have these results that we hope can help save women’s lives around the world.”
The researchers couldn't persuade obstetricians at the time to conduct a trial. No...they needed the help of the HLC to promote it first. Just think of all the JW women who helped bring that trial to realization - years and years of JW women being denied life saving blood transfusions just so this drug could be used for the general population.
This is not a boon for JW women - it is just another way that they have been used as guinea pigs for medical advancement.