Williams, S. C. P. (2013, Spring) Against the flow – what’s behind the decline in blood transfusions? Stanford Medicine. Retrieved from http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2013spring/article5.html#hdr Reply The obvious downside to this new arrangement is that emergency department physicians must now speculate as to the actual degree of commitment from the individual unconscious Jehovah’s Witness patient since their signed Advanced Medical Directive may be quite old and its entirely possible they may not even be a Jehovah’s Witness anymore. To Penny: the only solvent reason to get rid of the blood bank armband is if you can rely on all of your phlebotomists and transfusionists to accurately identify the patient and the sample and the blood product using only the hospital armband (preferably 100% of the time...). Our nurses have proven that they respect the blood bank armband slightly more than the hospital armband (which is to say not much), but with the blood bank band we have a somewhat better chance of catching them at it when they don't. We are going to 100% use of the blood bank armband because it helps us to catch more errors. We used to require that they hand write the medical record number on the tube from the hospital bracelet (the only place they could get it from in the room), but JC killed that process by announcing that we were causing them to make errors. In truth, we were catching WBIT by seeing the wrong medical record number on the label. This is not to say that they could not obtain the medical record number by returning to the nursing station and looking it up in the medical record or on the computer... Halabi, W. J., Jafari, M. D., Nguyen, V. Q., Carmichael, J. C., Mills, S., Pigazzi, A., Stamos, M. J. (2013). Blood transfusion in colorectal cancer surgery: incidence, outcomes, and predictive factors: an american college of surgeons national surgical quality improvement program analysis. The American Journal of Surgery, 206(6), 1024-1033. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amjsurg.2013.10.001

Meredith, K. G., May, H. T., Bair, T. L., Anderson, J. L., Horne, B. D., Tandar, A., . . . Muhlestein, J. B. (2006). Abstract 3912: Blood transfusions are associated with worse outcomes compared to no transfusion in patients with similar degrees of anemia and hematocrit decline while undergoing coronary angiography. American Heart Association 114:II_841. Retrieved from http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/114/18_MeetingAbstracts/II_841

Your hospital has invested time and resources to perfect its blood transfusion protocols to deliver superior patient care. However, a single patient or blood misidentification error can have serious or even fatal results. According to the FDA, there is an average of 414 transfusion errors in the U.S. each year. One of the top National Patient Safety Goals established by the Joint Commission is to eliminate transfusion errors related to patient identification. The PDC line of blood bands and systems can help. Gyamfi C, Berkowitz RL (September 2004). “Responses by pregnant Jehovah’s Witnesses on health care proxies”. Obstet Gynecol 104 (3): 541–4. doi:10.1097/01.AOG.0000135276.25886.8e. PMID 15339766. “This review refutes the commonly held belief that all Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to accept blood or any of its products. In this population of pregnant women, the majority were willing to accept some form of blood or blood products.” Nursing is also inserviced by yours truly. The inservice includes some legal facts and scenarios whereby they come to understand that a untoward patient event due to mislabeling will result in a non-defenseable legal issue that will most likely result in the loss of their license and possible personal lawsuit for gross negligence. I created a special bright yellow label for nursing to use just for BBK samples: all information prompts are on the label along with the statement that only information from the armband is used. Nurses sign an affadavit that they understand the policy. The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses is doing far more than making “recommendations” about blood. They have established very complex, detailed policy on it’s use. The policy is so complex that it requires special committees of elders to explain it to both Jehovah’s Witnesses and doctors. Even then most remain confused about what is permitted, what is forbidden, and what the reasoning behind the rules is. This includes the HLC themselves, members of which were involved in the establishment of AJWRB. In addition, simply stating that individuals “have the opportunity to choose” does not make it so. The idea that JW’s “are not pressured or forced to chose against their will” is very disingenuous. It would be like saying you have a choice when a robber points a gun at you and demands your wallet. What choice do you have in the situation? Perhaps you had a free choice at the time you joined the Watchtower and got baptized. However, what if you later came to learn about all of the problems with the Watchtower’s policy and no longer support it? Do you have a free choice not to follow the policy or to even question the policy? The answer is certainly not. It is even worse for those who were raised as JW’s. With the Watchtower pushing baptism on children and teenagers long before they have fully developed brains and critical thinking ability they end up being forced to support a policy they never had a chance to understand. If they do happen to figure out the truth and don’t want to follow or support the policy what are their choices? They depend on their JW family for support. They don’t want to lose the only friends they have, and their family and the congregation expect them to comply. If they don’t comply an announcement will be made that they are no longer Jehovah’s Witnesses and they will be shunned. Any who refuse to shun them will also be shunned. This is an incredible amount of pressure. If they have a condition that requires blood the level of duress all but eliminates any illusion of choice. https://www.ajwrb.org/the-h-l-c-perspective Reply I would like to see you include in your science a balanced perspective on the greed and filth of pharma companies.

The red crosses immense profit from volunteered blood is also something worth reviewing to provide a balanced perspective do people can make an informed decision and then be respected to make the own bodily autonomous decisions without being judged. Findley LJ, Redstone PM (March 1982). “Blood transfusion in adult Jehovah’s Witnesses. A case study of one congregation”. Arch Intern Med. 142(3): 606–607. doi:10.1001/archinte. te.142.3.606.

I have no dog in this fight about JW and religious beliefs. Bible is very clear that the original sin was judgement. All choices are conscience. We all pay the cost of our choice. A personal religious choice is equally as valid as a patriot sacrifice. I personally am not going to die for old bankers fighting over oil, while standing under a colorful sheet blowing in the wind, but to each their own beliefs. Whenever the Bible speaks of the misuse of blood it is always in the context of eating it as food and more specifically when the life of an animal has been taken. Transfusion of blood or blood components cannot be demonstrated to be the the equivalent of eating blood. Additionally, no life is taken to provide the blood or blood components that are transfused. Simply stated, the Bible has nothing to say about the modern medical use of blood products which are liquid tissue transplants and the equivalent of organ transplants. The obvious paradox Watchtower policy creates for Jehovah’s Witnesses is that all blood products are in fact permitted if sufficiently fractionated. Merrit. R, Banerjee, A., Granger, C., Newby, K., Califf, R., Harrington, R. (2005, November 23). U. S. heart patients receive more transfusions than international patients. Duke Clinical Research Institute. Retrieved from https://www.dcri.org/research/news/2005-news-archives/u.s.-heart-patients-receive-more-transfusions-than-international-patients Based on the latest findings of mRna shots also called “covid vaccines” and persistent spike proteins causing blood clots, I’m curious on the science of cleaning volunteered blood of these prion spikes.