Terri O Sullivan/Apostate Services UK
At the moment, I feel angry. And bitterly sad for the thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses who have died every year because they refused a blood transfusion that they needed.
On Friday the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses announced on their website that nearly all blood transfusions are now no longer prohibited. And that members could choose for themselves whether they wanted to accept a blood donation off any donor, or even donate blood themselves.
They said the change was made because the scriptures didn’t actually mention blood components or blood transfusions and that we should ‘not go beyond what is written’. No attempt to explain why they, up until last Friday, did ‘go beyond what is written’ before. Let alone mention the thousands, possibly tens of thousands of loyal Jehovah’s Witnesses who have died before they made this announcement. No apology was made. Not even for the many children that have died.
The announcement was posted as a video statement, one of many that they regularly post. And in it they don’t start with talking about this huge life-saving change. They first talk about how lovely it is that many people attended the conventions worldwide. The change in the blood doctrine was then added at the end and framed as just another bit of news to update you all on.
The framing was also that no change has been made to the prohibition of whole-blood transfusions. And to the majority of Jehovah’s Witnesses who have no education beyond high school, it sounded as though the change was not that different from their previous position of allowing blood fractions.
But it is significantly different!
Donated blood in modern hospitals is separated into 4 main components, red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and plasma. This is so the blood can be used to help more people, and that people only have the part of the blood that they need. This is called ‘Blood Component Therapy’. Blood Component Therapy accounts for about 90% of all blood transfusions. The Jehovah’s Witnesses new change is that all 4 of these blood components are now acceptable to receive from any donor or to donate to anyone. They still say that whole-blood donations are prohibited, but these only account for a small minority of blood donations in hospitals, especially in the UK.
Previously they used to say that blood ‘fractions’ are ok to accept, but blood fractions are quite different to blood components and only help in limited cases. Blood components is basically nearly all blood transfusions.
I had to read up on this on the UK Blood bank website to learn all of this. I certainly didn’t know it before. And had I still been a JW, I would have heard that announcement and thought ‘that sounds medically complex and also sounds like pretty much the same as before’. A cynic might conclude that that is why the messaging was framed that way.
