This topic need to be treated very delicately.
I would argue that soldiers on the front line with no access to blood and JW's have both contributed to the drive of reduced blood use. BUT this is misunderstood as JW's bringing new clinical policies through the idea blood is not good for you.
This is the awful truth, we can't and don't take life threatening experementation lightly. We simply don't do it. When we give blood it is because we really think a patient needs it. As with every intervention , there are risks. There are risks to giving oxygen!
The awful truth is...
The JW's have provided a large sample size of patients, that over time have contributed to showing where prophylactic blood, i.e. giving blood before a procedure as a precaution of blood loss... is not as necessary as we once assumed. By providing lives to experiment with, the JW's have lived and died on operating theatre tables all over the world for nearly 100 years now. They have by their lives, highlighted procedures where blood is not indicated.
BUT..........Blood does save lives, all day in hospitals globally. To skew that message is very, very dishonest.
There is NO alternative for blood in 2014, no other means to carry oxygen to the cells of a human being. If someone has lost the blood volume necessary to sustain life, it has to be replaced. If a human has lost the ability to clot, if a human has lost their platelets....they need to be replaced.
But the procedures with risk of bleeding, such as cardiac surgery now are improved in that they don't routinely give blood prophylactically. Some studies credit JW's for this. Some credit the amazing doxtors that have found alternate means of surgery, that have proven to be safer...due to the restraints of a JW patient. But let's be clear, the JW's have not advanced medical research, they have offered up new data with their lives. Where did they live, where did they dide....when saying no to blood.
As the article said...
When someones blood results come back and the haemoglobin (hb) is low..... some people may be sat upright, normal as ever. Some may be pale, short of breath and with a racing heart. Some lose a lot of blood and recover, some lose a little and don't.
To say Brother 'X' had a HB level of 'y' and said no to blood and survived...as we heard so many times in assemblies etc...is inappropriate. 9/10 they add "a doctor told hi that had he had blood, he would likely have died." I can not think of ONE reason why blood would kill you, other than these staements being a terrible over simplification of the risks it has as an intervention and the probability of a mistake of a doctor administering the wrong blood type. These are people putting their life on the line. They have every right to. But it is what it is.
Youths that put god first..... are no longer here. They would in all probability be here now had they said yes to blood. But .....yes indeed we have their data to add to the medical sciences, they likely added to what we know....just as the 60yr old Jw Who survived CABG without blood contributed data......but it is not something I would personally celebrate.
Snare
p.s. Such articles trouble me. It has quoted doctors and science without a clear context and it feels troubling. We don't have much data because we dont experiment with people on death's door. We know it saves lives, but we can't research it as much as we would like for obvious reasons.
We also dont have much research on medication and babies, medication and children or medication and pregnant women. All for obvious ressons. We cant test and experiment with these groups! it is illegal to use these people in drug trials. Imagine a religion that had a doctrine of where experimentation on children, babies and pregnant women was mandatory. Would that increase medical knowledge! Yes.....
You get my point....
