Picking up where I left off, sort of...which was here, from Seeber/Shander's textbook Basics of Blood Management:
In 1979 the governing body of the Jehovah’ s Witnesses announced the formation of Hospital Liaison Committees...
Seeber/Shander go on to say this:
These continued to “support Jehovah’s Witnesses in
their determination to prevent their being given blood
transfusions, to clear away misunderstandings on the part
of doctors and hospitals, to establish a more cooperative
spirit between medical institutions and Witness patients
(our italics) ” and to “alert hospital staff to the fact that
there are valid alternatives to the infusion of blood ” .
It is in this paragraph that the SABM duo of Seeber/Shander try to distance the WTS from the HLC. The duo emphasize, through their italics, that it was the Jehovah's Witnesses themselves who desired the HLC. The responsibility for the medical intervention then comes, not from above, but is placed squarely on the individual's shoulders.
This is inaccurate.
Firstly, this account totally ignores that the individual JW's position has been dictated by the WTS to begin with. As James Penton pointed out, we are all "quite aware of the fact that a Jehovah's witness could be and would be disfellowshipped for voluntarily accepting a blood transfusion. "
Secondly, the Jehovah's Witnesses who were involved in the HLC were not representative of the general JW population. Penton has revealed that the JWs in Canada who were instrumental in setting up hospital committees were "leading Canadian Witnesses (including Watch Tower officials at the Canadian branch)". It is likely that these leading Canadian Witnesses had interests in the medical world and related fields. For example, Alex Tost was a chemist. And, in the States, there were several doctors besides Dr. Dixon, the Bethel doctor, who were Jehovah's Witnesses.
Dr. Dixon and Gene Smalley wrote Jehovah's Witnesses - The Surgical/Ethical Challenge which was published in JAMA 1981. In that article, Dixon/Smalley claim that
Jehovah's Witnesses accept medical and surgical treatment. In fact, scores of them are physicians, even surgeons.
Scores of JW doctors. How many is that? It is over 40 and probably less than 100.
I don't know who all these doctors were but some names are evident.
Mostly osteopathic doctors - Dr. W. E. Winslow. Dr. Henri Enfroy. Dr. Ronald Broadwater. Dr. Herk Hutchins. All JWs. And "scores" more, according to Dixon/Smalley.
There is a small part in the Dixon/Smalley article that I want to talk about. Keep in mind that this article was published only two years after the HLC went official and became a department of the WTS. The new hospital department had a mission: to promote the notion of not using donor blood - to promote the ideology of keeping blood pure, not contaminated.
Dixon/Smalley reveal that the WTS lobbied for support. They asked doctors to produce articles that supported their position.
In response to our request, Cooley recently did a statistical review of 1,026 operations, 22% on minors, and determined "that the risk of surgery in patients of the Jehovah's Witness group has not been substantially higher than for others."
I am going to take a break for now, and will return with more thoughts on what Dixon/Smalley said about Cooley's report. But in the meantime, if anybody is even reading this, and if you feel so inclined, I challenge anyone to find that "statistical review". Please do.
