Posts by OrphanCrow

103

New Research at AJWRB

by Lee Elder in

the latest research article published at ajwrb estimates the number of jehovah's witnesses who have died from following or being coerced to follow watchtower's blood policy.

the numbers are staggering.

http://ajwrb.org/jehovahs-witnesses-and-blood-tens-of-thousands-dead-in-hidden-tragedy.

OrphanCrow

steve2: A further complicating factor is that in many Western countries, babies with serious congenital conditions born to JW parents become state wards when medical professionals deem surgery is needed, including blood transfusions.

That is true. However, the number of infants/children that have succumbed to a no blood position are not included in any of the estimates that have been done on JW blood deaths. The retrospective studies that have been done, on which the estimates have extrapolated from, have only included the adult population.

And yes, sometimes a medical team will apply for transfusion rights for a child. This usually only happens when all other alternatives have either been tried or the noblood treatment does not have the evidence to back up its effectiveness.

For an idea of how many Jehovah's Witness children are subjected to no blood treatment, check out the results of a google scholar search that brings up several medical cases involving Jehovah's Witness children where the medical teams have went ahead with no blood procedures. And then, add in the indeterminate number of children who expire before their case becomes something to make its way into medical journals.

https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&q=pediatric+jehovah&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=&oq=pediatric

103

New Research at AJWRB

by Lee Elder in

the latest research article published at ajwrb estimates the number of jehovah's witnesses who have died from following or being coerced to follow watchtower's blood policy.

the numbers are staggering.

http://ajwrb.org/jehovahs-witnesses-and-blood-tens-of-thousands-dead-in-hidden-tragedy.

OrphanCrow

Ruby456: I think that jw lives are being saved and far fewer are dying.

Please support your statement.

Why do you think that? Where do you get your information from (and what is that information) that you base your conclusion on?

31

Homophobic "story" in June 2017 WT

by ILoveTTATT2 in

jw
friends

.

OrphanCrow

Sparrow: they do seem to be particularly picking on lesbians.
Stuckin: Yes. They certainly are focussing more on Lesbian relationships recently.
There was the Cartoon with Sophia and her school friend who had "two mummies"
Then there was the Lot video at the convention.
There was also an outline for the Circuit overseer's visit a few years back that spoke of "pornography with lesbian content"

I noticed the same.

And, it isn't just lesbians, it is the female who is the bad one.

There was the recent material focused on teenagers "sending the wrong message". And in every example given, the girl was the one sending the wrong message.

And then the material about how to protect children from sex abuse. One of the guidelines was to ensure that children are "dressed modestly". Have you ever heard anyone, ever, use the word "modestly" when speaking of boy's clothing? Of course not. It is the girl children who are being talked about.

*edit to add - I forgot one. Wasn't there a WT about how women should have babies so that they don't "meddle in other people's lives and gossip"?

It seems as though the GB are rattled about women. Maybe they are striking back at the ARC's recommendation that women be involved in the JC process. Or, more likely, they are simply scared of people who sit down when they pee

17

Article: WBBR-AM: A “Pioneering” Radio Experiment by the Watch Tower - A revealing history of WBBR- Includes the last broadcast - April 1957

by AndersonsInfo in

jw
friends

http://watchtowerdocuments.org/wbbr-am-a-pioneering-radio-experiment/#more-9319.

wbbr-am: a “pioneering” radio experiment by the watch tower .

introduction to main article.

OrphanCrow

Anderson: ...gathered by Orphan Crow

And credit, too, to whoever it is that does the research at those links, whoever they are!

The tangled web of business dealings that the WT leaders were/are involved in are difficult to follow and sort out. What is clear, though, is that there are many prominent, wealthy JWs who operate behind the scenes of the WTS. It is hard to tell who wags the tail and who wags the dog at times, tho.

The character who sued Rutherford over the sale of WHK was Anton Keorber. His story/history is on this page here (almost half way down):

http://jwemployees.bravehost.com/NewsReports/2035.html

Keorber was disfellowshipped after suing the judge, but then resurfaced several years later, trying to get "pioneer" status. After being turned down all the way up the line, he bought Nathan Knorr a Cadillac, became a pioneer, and then a Circuit Servant.

17

Article: WBBR-AM: A “Pioneering” Radio Experiment by the Watch Tower - A revealing history of WBBR- Includes the last broadcast - April 1957

by AndersonsInfo in

jw
friends

http://watchtowerdocuments.org/wbbr-am-a-pioneering-radio-experiment/#more-9319.

wbbr-am: a “pioneering” radio experiment by the watch tower .

introduction to main article.

OrphanCrow

Barbara, I was reading the material at your link to watchtowerdocuments, and I read this about the organ:

In 1931, the WBBR studios were moved to 122-126 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn. They were situated in a rear building near Furman Street. In 1931 they installed an organ, a Gottfried formerly from WHK in Cleveland.

The organ came from WHK, another radio station.

WHK was a radio station that had been purchased by Rutherford in 1924 and sold in 1934 for $250,000. After the sale, Rutherford was sued by the fellow JW who claimed he had been the one to put up $10,000 (half of purchase price, apparently) to buy WHK and Radio Air Service Corporation.

Another radio station which the WTS doesn't include in their history books - KFWM (from the same link - http://jwdivorces.bravehost.com/rutherford2.html ):

KFWM-AM in Oakland, California was licensed as a commercial radio station, and went on the air for the first time in July 1925, under the ownership of the Oakland Educational Society. KFWM was devoted exclusively to religious content provided by the WatchTower Society -- Bethelites and Pilgrims from WatchTower HQ, and "Bible Students" from congregations all over southern California. Part of the Oakland Educational Society building (formerly the Pilgrim Congregational Church) contained the equipment and outside tower for KFWM, while the large sanctuary and other portions of the building served as Oakland's first owned "Kingdom Hall". Online sources refer to the Oakland Educational Society building specifically as the "International Bible School", the "I.B.S.A. Auditorium", and the "I.B.S.A. Temple".
KFWM's corporate "President" was Henry P. Drey, a WatchTower Pilgrim and onetime Bethelite, while the corporate "Vice-President" was W. R. Fraser, who was a known "Bible Student". Other station employees included another WatchTower Pilgrim, Gordon R. Pollock. Readers should review all of their WatchTower history sources to understand that the WTBTS has never, ever claimed ownership of KFWM. The WTBTS merely has claimed a "contractual relationship" with KFWM to provide "biblical content" for this radio station's programming, which was the "excuse" provided to the government and general public for the station's religious format, and the fact that every person connected with KFWM was also somehow connected either to the WTBTS, or one of its local affiliates. In 1925, whom is the sole person who had the authority and ability to bring all of this together -- only "Boss" Rutherford. It is a certainty that all of these WatchTower Society personnel and local "Bible Students" served as "straw-men" to keep "Judge" Rutherford's personal ownership of KFWM a secret from both the general public and the government.
Frankly, online ownership info pertaining to KFWM is so contradictory, sketchy, and incorrect, that we will not attempt to provide a definitive history of such (no doubt partially caused by efforts to hide Rutherford's changing ownership interests over the years). What we do know is that over the years that KFWM grew and flourished. From its founding in 1925 through 1929, for all intents and purposes, KFWM was WBBR-WEST. However, in January 1930, "Judge" Rutherford sold part of the operation to unknown parties (probably once again a local newspaper), which again resulted in the formation of a new corporate owner -- EDUCATIONAL BROADCASTING CORPORATION. Thereafter, additional real estate, including satellite locations, were acquired, and the station's call letters were changed. Notably, however, "Bible Students" H. P. Drey and W. R. Fraser continued to run the station as corporate "President" and "VP. However, with the addition of non-JW owners, KFWM ceased being WBBR-WEST, and simply became one of many radio stations that occasionally broadcast WatchTower programming. Finally, in 1939, there was another major sale, and this one appears to have resulted in the departure of most of the "Jehovah's Witnesses" left at KFWM. But, who knows. Even after some other group took over management of the station, Rutherford may still have retained a minority interest.

More radio history here: http://jwdivorces.bravehost.com/rutherford2.html "Judge Rutherford's Personal Radio Empire" starts about 3/4 of the way down the page

332

The most successful teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses and an amazing new book on the divine name

by slimboyfat in

jehovah's witnesses have had to revise their chronology and various doctrinal interpretations due to events and scholarly corrections.

but the one teaching where they have been consistently ahead of the curve is the importance of jehovah's name.. .

i'm going to run through a (necessarily selective) timeline of jw events and scholarly publications that demonstrate the phenomenal success of this teaching in the last days.

OrphanCrow

sbf: ... it's embarrassing for JWs to explain why Jesus is apparently called Jehovah here.

It isn't just embarrassing.

This is one place where it is painfully obvious that the motivations, and the WT's process, is flawed at its core. You can wave all sorts of scholarly books around that claim to speculatively support the WT's "Jehovah" additions into the NT text, but when they use it inconsistently, it is clear that they have no interest in real evidence or academic validation - they are only interested in making sure that Jesus doesn't get divine status. The WT perverts the text just enough to support their version of god. And that, for sure, is NOT Jesus.

Go up a few verses. Check out what the WT "translators" did to Hebrews 1:8

http://avoidjw.org/holy-bible/hebrews-1-8/

*edit to add: in about 4 hours from now, the whining and gnashing of teeth should increase on the jworg site. A court in Russia will be ruling on whether or not the silver Sword is extremist. I don't hold out much hope for that fancy pretty JW bibble. The org is trying to denigrate the Russian experts. The org thinks that their shiny brand new bibble should be accepted by a country whose background in Christianity is almost 1000 years older than they are.

14

Canada starts fight-back against bloodless surgery?

by darkspilver in

i'm sure orphancrow will be able to fill in the details for us.. front page news with picture all over the canadian globe and mail newspaper today.. with major double-page spread across the whole of pages 8 and 9 in the newspaper's front section.. globe and mail, tuesday 8 august 2017.. the patient, a 70-year-old man with high-risk prostate cancer, was a jehovah’s witness.. his religion was one of the reasons he decided to undergo surgery at st. joseph’s healthcare in hamilton, home to a robot named da vinci whose steady metal hands can remove a prostate with scant risk of the blood transfusions forbidden by the man’s faith.. on a recent afternoon, the patient laid unconscious on an operating table as surgeon bobby shayegan and his team plunged a camera and three robotically controlled surgical instruments through small incisions in his abdomen.. dr. shayegan settled himself in front of a three-dimensional screen, clasped the two joysticks that controlled the tools inside his patient’s pelvis and proceeded to cut, cauterize and stitch until he freed the man’s prostate, pulling it out through one of the original incisions.. there was next to no blood.. “that was routine,” dr. shayegan said afterward, holding the plum-sized gland that he and the robot had removed together.

...in its first real ruling on a robotic surgery, the expert committee that advises ontario on which new health technologies to pay for said there was no good evidence that robot-assisted radical prostatectomy is any better than conventional open surgery when it comes to controlling cancer or preserving urinary and sexual function.. the panel said the robot’s other benefits – patients have smaller incisions, lose less blood, suffer less pain and leave the hospital sooner – were not significant enough to justify spending, on average, an extra $3,224 a case, a figure that does not include the millions that wealthy benefactors have spent buying the machines for canadian hospitals.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/the-fight-for-robots-in-canadas-operatingrooms/article35897282/.

OrphanCrow

Okay, ILove. Sorry if I misunderstood. The issue was like you said, evidence.

Solid data and evidence is needed. Especially when public $$$ is being used.

What I find interesting about the OP is that this is yet another media piece that uses a Jehovah's Witness patient to promote and/or discuss medical technology. A patient who doesn't even have a medical blood disorder - they have a blood disorder that has been given to them. And that is the selling point - no blood. From a made up blood disorder.

14

Canada starts fight-back against bloodless surgery?

by darkspilver in

i'm sure orphancrow will be able to fill in the details for us.. front page news with picture all over the canadian globe and mail newspaper today.. with major double-page spread across the whole of pages 8 and 9 in the newspaper's front section.. globe and mail, tuesday 8 august 2017.. the patient, a 70-year-old man with high-risk prostate cancer, was a jehovah’s witness.. his religion was one of the reasons he decided to undergo surgery at st. joseph’s healthcare in hamilton, home to a robot named da vinci whose steady metal hands can remove a prostate with scant risk of the blood transfusions forbidden by the man’s faith.. on a recent afternoon, the patient laid unconscious on an operating table as surgeon bobby shayegan and his team plunged a camera and three robotically controlled surgical instruments through small incisions in his abdomen.. dr. shayegan settled himself in front of a three-dimensional screen, clasped the two joysticks that controlled the tools inside his patient’s pelvis and proceeded to cut, cauterize and stitch until he freed the man’s prostate, pulling it out through one of the original incisions.. there was next to no blood.. “that was routine,” dr. shayegan said afterward, holding the plum-sized gland that he and the robot had removed together.

...in its first real ruling on a robotic surgery, the expert committee that advises ontario on which new health technologies to pay for said there was no good evidence that robot-assisted radical prostatectomy is any better than conventional open surgery when it comes to controlling cancer or preserving urinary and sexual function.. the panel said the robot’s other benefits – patients have smaller incisions, lose less blood, suffer less pain and leave the hospital sooner – were not significant enough to justify spending, on average, an extra $3,224 a case, a figure that does not include the millions that wealthy benefactors have spent buying the machines for canadian hospitals.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/the-fight-for-robots-in-canadas-operatingrooms/article35897282/.

OrphanCrow

... if we factor in less ward time, less pain killers and less use of donated blood I am sure the overall saving would outweigh the greater cost of the procedure. I am guessing...

Yes, it is a guess. And there isn't evidence to back up that guess. Unfortunately, when it comes to medicine and science, what seems to be intuitively right and logical, often isn't. That is why we use the scientific method. And scrutinize the method and results at all times

14

Canada starts fight-back against bloodless surgery?

by darkspilver in

i'm sure orphancrow will be able to fill in the details for us.. front page news with picture all over the canadian globe and mail newspaper today.. with major double-page spread across the whole of pages 8 and 9 in the newspaper's front section.. globe and mail, tuesday 8 august 2017.. the patient, a 70-year-old man with high-risk prostate cancer, was a jehovah’s witness.. his religion was one of the reasons he decided to undergo surgery at st. joseph’s healthcare in hamilton, home to a robot named da vinci whose steady metal hands can remove a prostate with scant risk of the blood transfusions forbidden by the man’s faith.. on a recent afternoon, the patient laid unconscious on an operating table as surgeon bobby shayegan and his team plunged a camera and three robotically controlled surgical instruments through small incisions in his abdomen.. dr. shayegan settled himself in front of a three-dimensional screen, clasped the two joysticks that controlled the tools inside his patient’s pelvis and proceeded to cut, cauterize and stitch until he freed the man’s prostate, pulling it out through one of the original incisions.. there was next to no blood.. “that was routine,” dr. shayegan said afterward, holding the plum-sized gland that he and the robot had removed together.

...in its first real ruling on a robotic surgery, the expert committee that advises ontario on which new health technologies to pay for said there was no good evidence that robot-assisted radical prostatectomy is any better than conventional open surgery when it comes to controlling cancer or preserving urinary and sexual function.. the panel said the robot’s other benefits – patients have smaller incisions, lose less blood, suffer less pain and leave the hospital sooner – were not significant enough to justify spending, on average, an extra $3,224 a case, a figure that does not include the millions that wealthy benefactors have spent buying the machines for canadian hospitals.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/the-fight-for-robots-in-canadas-operatingrooms/article35897282/.

OrphanCrow

And then there was this, an article that was dated 2008:

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/regrets-after-prostate-surgery/

Regrets After Prostate Surgery
BY TARA PARKER-POPEAugust 27, 2008 9:26 am
One in five men who undergoes prostate surgery to treat cancer later regrets the decision, a new study shows. And surprisingly, regret is highest among men who opt for robotic prostatectomy, a minimally invasive surgery that is growing in popularity as a treatment.
The research, published in the medical journal European Urology, is the latest to suggest that technological advances in prostate surgery haven’t necessarily translated to better results for the men on which it is performed. It also adds to growing concerns that men are being misled about the real risks and benefits of robotic surgical procedures used to treat prostate cancer.
Of the 219,000 men in the United States who learn they have prostate cancer each year, nearly half undergo surgical removal of the gland, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Duke University researchers surveyed 400 men with early prostate cancer who had undergone either a traditional “open” surgical procedure or newer robotic surgery to remove the prostate. Overall, the vast majority of men were satisfied. However, 19 percent regretted their treatment choice. Notably, men who had undergone robotic surgery were four times more likely to regret their choice than men who had undergone the open procedure.
Researchers say the higher level of regret among robotic patients suggests that they had higher expectations for their recovery, possibly because the robotic procedure is widely touted as a more innovative surgery than traditional prostatectomy. Even among men who had the same scores on erectile function and other measures of post-surgery recovery, the robotic patients still reported a higher level of dissatisfaction and regret than other men.
Part of the problem may be that doctors who perform robotic prostatectomies commonly cite potency rates as high as 95 percent and above among their patients, giving patients an unrealistic view of life after surgery.
But the data are highly misleading. Researchers often define potency as simply being able to achieve an erection that is “adequate” for intercourse — but for many men, that definition doesn’t capture their ongoing struggle to return to a normal sex life. Earlier this year, researchers from George Washington University and New York University used a more realistic definition of potency, showing that after surgery, fewer than half of the men studied felt their sex lives had returned to normal within a year.
Another important finding of the new research showed that men were less likely to regret their choice shortly after surgery. The men who were long past surgery experienced more regret. That finding likely speaks to the fact that as time passes after surgery, men gain a more realistic view of lingering health and quality-of-life issues like erection problems and other changes in their sex lives.
The Duke researchers said that the study shows urologists need to communicate more carefully the risks and benefits of the treatment prior to surgery so that men have more realistic expectations of what to expect.

14

Canada starts fight-back against bloodless surgery?

by darkspilver in

i'm sure orphancrow will be able to fill in the details for us.. front page news with picture all over the canadian globe and mail newspaper today.. with major double-page spread across the whole of pages 8 and 9 in the newspaper's front section.. globe and mail, tuesday 8 august 2017.. the patient, a 70-year-old man with high-risk prostate cancer, was a jehovah’s witness.. his religion was one of the reasons he decided to undergo surgery at st. joseph’s healthcare in hamilton, home to a robot named da vinci whose steady metal hands can remove a prostate with scant risk of the blood transfusions forbidden by the man’s faith.. on a recent afternoon, the patient laid unconscious on an operating table as surgeon bobby shayegan and his team plunged a camera and three robotically controlled surgical instruments through small incisions in his abdomen.. dr. shayegan settled himself in front of a three-dimensional screen, clasped the two joysticks that controlled the tools inside his patient’s pelvis and proceeded to cut, cauterize and stitch until he freed the man’s prostate, pulling it out through one of the original incisions.. there was next to no blood.. “that was routine,” dr. shayegan said afterward, holding the plum-sized gland that he and the robot had removed together.

...in its first real ruling on a robotic surgery, the expert committee that advises ontario on which new health technologies to pay for said there was no good evidence that robot-assisted radical prostatectomy is any better than conventional open surgery when it comes to controlling cancer or preserving urinary and sexual function.. the panel said the robot’s other benefits – patients have smaller incisions, lose less blood, suffer less pain and leave the hospital sooner – were not significant enough to justify spending, on average, an extra $3,224 a case, a figure that does not include the millions that wealthy benefactors have spent buying the machines for canadian hospitals.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/the-fight-for-robots-in-canadas-operatingrooms/article35897282/.

OrphanCrow

ILoveTTAT2: There is very little good data that shows benefits/drawbacks, and the data is flawed... the entire rest of the article says so!

Exactly. I say "good for Ontario" for demanding solid evidence instead of just jumping on the technology bandwagon

But in the rush to adopt the da Vinci technology, few researchers conducted randomized controlled trials comparing robot-assisted prostatectomy to open surgery, the gold standard in evidence.
"One of the stories here," Dr. Dhalla said, "is why isn't there good evidence?"
He estimated that hundreds of thousands of men around the world have had a robot-assisted prostatectomy, "and there's been one, tiny randomized control trial in Australia with about 300 patients comparing the open approach with the robotic approach."
That Australian study, published a year ago in The Lancet, was the foundation of OHTAC's thumbs-down for robot-assisted prostatectomies.
The study, which followed 157 men who underwent robot-assisted surgery and 151 who underwent open surgery, found no statistically significant difference in cancer control, urinary function or sexual function between the two types of surgery.
Critics of the OHTAC report say the Australian study has profound shortcomings – namely, that it compared the work of an experienced open surgeon to that of a robotics novice.
The study also reported outcomes only three months after surgery, which could mask longer-term benefits of the robotic approach, said Stephen Pautler, a professor of surgery at Western University in London, Ont., who was among the urologists who asked to have their names taken off OHTAC's final report.
"We said you [OHTAC] are basing the entire economic analysis on a flawed study," Dr. Pautler said. "They were absolutely rigid and would not change their mind."
(Intuitive, for its part, said in an e-mailed statement there are many studies backing the da Vinci Surgical System that rely on "real-world evidence." The company called OHTAC's heavy reliance on randomized controlled trial data "inconsistent" with recent health-technology assessments in other places, including Alberta, the only province that funds robot-assisted surgery.)
But Anthony Adili, the chief of surgery at St. Joseph's Healthcare and a cheerleader for robotic surgery, said he couldn't fault OHTAC when the committee had so little high-quality evidence at its disposal.