B S

(Investigator 75,  2000 November)

THE DOCTRINE AND ITS PROBLEMS

Around 1945 the Leaders of Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) imposed the doctrine that blood transfusions are dangerous and against God's law.

Much debate ensued in journals of philosophy, medicine and law on whether people who say "No" to medical treatment should be compelled to accept when life is at stake.

• Free expression of religion 
• Right of bodily self-determination 
• Preserving a life for the welfare and safety of others 
• Patient-implied consent vs next of kin 
• State interest in preventing suicide 
• State interest in protecting incompetents 
• State protection of the medical profession 
• State interest in protecting children
  

(Byrn, R M Compulsory Lifesaving Treatment for the Competent Adult. In: Contemporary Issues in Bioethics, 1978, Beauchamp, T L & Walters, L Dickenson, USA, pp. 150-161)

The debates, however, hardly touched on:

1. Membership loss rate among JWs. Since ex JWs usually condemn the anti-blood doctrine, a JW whose life is saved by compulsion may later be glad when he leaves the sect.
2. JWs have a high rate of doctrinal change. Might their opposition to blood transfusion eventually be abandoned?
3. Is "indoctrination" of propaganda morally wrong? Should life-threatening choices that flow from indoctrination be permitted? Are JW doctrines taught or indoctrinated?
4. Do JWs reject transfusions due to social threats and pressures?

On point "1" consider an example on the Internet by Paul Blizzard:

Toung [is] a refugee from Vietnam. He and his wife escaped from Vietnam after its fall and immigrated to the U.S. His wife earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and Toung is a technician of some sort.
They were converted to the JWs from Buddhism, believing it was Christianity. They have been JWs for about 4 years. Last Fall, Toung's wife was delivering her second child when she began to hemorrhage. The elders called and the "hospital committee" came and surrounded the bed. Heaping guilt on this couple, they convinced them of "god's law on blood transfusion." The doctors pleaded with Toung and his wife to take the simple procedure which would save her life… Toung watched his young, beautiful wife slip into a coma and die as a result of severe blood loss.
The newspapers picked up the story and rushed to Toung for an interview. Toung, still in shock and grief over the loss of his wife, blurted out the statement: "I don't know whether this religion is the truth or not. Maybe this idea of a New System is just a fantasy." Adding insult to injury, after seeing the interview in the newspaper, the local elders disfellowshipped Toung without question. They called him on the phone and accused him of being an apostate.

Regarding point "2". JWs opposed vaccinations until 1952 and tissue transplants until 1980. [For details see Investigator 12 & 31]

After JW Leaders abandoned opposition to tissue transplants and made them a matter of individual conscience the rank and file accepted them. The journal Transplantation, for example, reported on Renal Transplantation in Thirteen Jehovah's Witnesses. (1988 June Volume 45 pp. 1045-1049)

A related problem is that the Leaders keep refining and even changing the rules regarding what blood-related treatment is O.K. Strict opposition to all blood components ceased about 1975. There followed increasingly complex guidelines as to what blood-products could be accepted. Such changes can cost lives when rank-and-file JWs are not up-to-date with the latest "truth".

For example, the "retirement age couple" in Table I [see below] were the subject of a letter to a newspaper:

A blank in the "Reference" column of Table I represents news items sighted but which lacked the name of the item or date.

The list is partial. There are thousands of newspapers and magazines and most lack indexes. Even if all news reports about JW deaths could be found this would still omit all who did not come to the notice of reporters.

In Investigator No. 12 it's argued that four JWs have died needlessly in South Australia. Since SA has about 1/700^th of all JWs worldwide a rough estimate is that worldwide since the 1940s about 700 x 4 =2800 JWs have died needlessly.

Since Investigator No. 12,  possible 5th and 6th SA victims have come to notice – increasing the world estimate to 700 x 6 = 4200.

New Zealand has about 1/400^th of all JWs worldwide. The table includes 2 deaths in New Zealand which, if there were no others, would give a world estimate of only 400 x 2 = 800.

Some anti-JW magazines estimate 6,000 needless JW deaths per year but give no calculation. We need more calculations of the above sort and based on cities, states and countries for which all JW deaths from blood loss are known.

Another technique would be to ask ex-JWs about blood-loss deaths in congregations they used to attend. If we sample 1000 ex-JWs we could work out the average deaths from blood loss per congregation and multiply this by the number of congregations worldwide.

Another point is that the rejection of a transfusion is often only a contributing cause of death. The JW is sick or injured in the first place and often survival is only a probability even with a transfusion. For example, one entry in Table I says "3 to 15 dead". This refers to cardiovascular surgery on 542 JWs during a 20-year period:

Table 1 lists referenced deaths – reported in newspapers and magazines – and includes many not listed on the web site.

Table II lists unreferenced deaths – obtained by the web site creator via e-mail and correspondence. I've deleted deaths by suicide as these are a separate topic.

Table II could be extended by searching in anti-JW magazines. TIDBITS (2000 Oct/Nov), for example, says: