A young Jehovah's Witness has died just hours after giving birth to twins. She had signed a form refusing blood transfusions, and her family would not overrule her. Couldn't doctors have intervened?
2007-11-10 13:43:31 · 24 answers · asked by J R 4 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Jesus said to his disciples: ‘If anyone wants to come after me, let him disown himself and pick up his torture stake and continually follow me. For whoever wants to save his soul will lose it; but whoever loses his soul for my sake will find it.’” (Matt. 16:21-25; Mark 8:31-35) There is only one way to gain life and that is by living in harmony with the will of God. Confidence in God is never misplaced. As the Divine Physician he can do what no human doctor ever could: he can extend the life of his servants, not merely for a few troubled years, but for all eternity—if necessary, by a resurrection from the dead—in his glorious new world now so near at hand.
There you Be Sprite....
2007-11-10 13:52:15 · answer #1 · answered by conundrum 7 · 11⤊ 2⤋
What is interesting about all of this is, that the hospital was given a blood salvage machine by the congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, and the mother signed to say that she was agreeable to this machine being used. However, the hospital staff did not know how to use it and as she lay bleeding, the staff were trying to work out how the machine works. The hospital is now being sued. This machine was donated in July, so the hospital had 3 months in which to teach its staff on its operation.
What a pity it is that people jump on the bandwagon and denounce this poor man and the family, before they find out all the facts.
2007-11-11 06:33:15 · answer #2 · answered by Everlasting Life 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
The doctors can not intervene unless the woman proved that she was not competent at the time the decision was made. The doctors realize that this was a spiritual decision (one that Jehovah's Witness' and many others take very seriously) and if they would have gone against the patients wishes they could face a serious lawsuit. It all about respecting others wishes no matter how we feel about their decisions. A lot of people do not understand Jehovah's Witness principles and therefore are very judgmental.
2007-11-10 13:59:54 · answer #3 · answered by Cheryl W 1 · 8⤊ 0⤋
This kind of comment always suprises me. Not speaking as a witness but just in the sceme of things. Telling it like it is.
Why is it okay for someone 17 because he is a young man be sent to Iraq to die for something the government says is worth dieing for, yet if a religion dies for what they personally believe in "Oh my Gosh, how can we let those people continue."
"What are we going to do as a society to stop these people."
When you stop world leaders from sending thousands of young men to their death for some bogus cause then you can have the right to turn on some religion for what they believe to be doing the right thing.
Why don't you just wave a flag and say she died for her country and that would make it alright.
2007-11-11 07:34:00 · answer #4 · answered by Ruth 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
No, she was an adult and able to make her own decisions. The only problem I have with her "choice" is that Jehovah's Witnesses would have "shunned" her if she had taken the blood transfusion. Even her family would have to treat her as an outcast. So her choice was between dying or living with the shame of shunning, which isn't really much of a free "choice".
2007-11-11 05:55:10 · answer #5 · answered by browneyedgirl 3 · 0⤊ 3⤋
She thought long and hard about this. She knew what she was signing. She died for what she believe in and she held firm to what was her in faith.
Its not up to us in the cyberspace to condemn or approve. What we have the right is to honor her life and her commitment in faith.
This is different from Islam, because only she died. She did not want blood on her hands. Her faith was in what is Gods laws not in what man says. Her love of God made her willing to stand by the laws that she had learned.
Her family, Husband and children will miss her greatly and will have great pride in her convection. We have the promise of the Resurrection and I know her family is willing to wait for that promise.
2007-11-11 02:34:02 · answer #6 · answered by debbri48 4 · 3⤊ 0⤋
No.
Forcing any treatment upon anyone who has specifically refused it is usually a crime (typically "assault").
Of course, death is unnatural, and saddens every reasonable person. It seems crass, however, to turn a tragic death into a platform for one's opinionated rantings.
This tragedy occurred nearly two weeks ago, on October 25, 2007. Despite what pro-blood activists and anti-Witness critics might pretend, her doctors informed the family that Mrs. Gough would have died even if she had received blood transfusions.
That's little consolation, but it is unsurprising.
During a hemorrhagic event, artificial expanders almost always work better than blood itself at keeping veins and arteries from collapsing. In addition, targeted treatment of specific blood fractions is considered preferable to old-fashioned "throw everything at it and see what sticks" thinking of whole blood transfusions. Of course, Jehovah's Witnesses generally accept artificial products and fractions derived from plasma, platelets, and red/white cells.
Since Jehovah's Witnesses only refuse whole blood and its four major components, doctors still have many many proven products and techniques. In fact, many or most doctors have come to prefer these products and techniques for ALL their patients.
It is not Jehovah's Witnesses who decide that blood is sacred. It is Almighty God who declares it so, as the Divine Author of the Holy Bible!
As God's spokesman and as Head of the Christian congregation, Jesus Christ made certain that the early congregation reiterated, recorded, and communicated renewed Christian restrictions against the misuse of blood.
Jehovah's Witnesses are not anti-medicine or anti-technology, and they do not have superstitious ideas about some immortal "soul" literally encapsulated in blood. Instead, as Christians, the Witnesses seek to obey the very plain language of the bible regarding blood.
As Christians, they are bound by the bible's words in "the Apostolic Decree". Ironically, this decree was the first official decision communicated to the various congregations by the twelve faithful apostles (and a handful of other "older men" which the apostles had chosen to add to the first century Christian governing body in Jerusalem). God and Christ apparently felt (and feel) that respect for blood is quite important.
Here is what the "Apostolic Decree" said, which few self-described Christians obey or even respect:
(Acts 15:20) Write them [the various Christian congregations] to abstain from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood.
(Acts 15:28-29) For the holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to you, except these necessary things, 29 to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication. If you carefully keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper.
Quite explicitly, the Apostolic Decree plainly forbids the misuse of blood by Christians (despite the fact that nearly every other provision of former Jewish Mosaic Law was recognized as unnecessary). It seems odd therefore, that literally one Christian religion continues to teach that humans must not use blood for any purpose other than honoring Almighty God.
A better question would ask: How can other self-described Christian religions justify the fact that they don't even care if their adherents drink blood and eat blood products?
Jehovah's Witnesses recognize the repeated bible teaching that blood is specially "owned" by God, and must not be used for any human purpose. Witnesses do not have any superstitious aversion to testing or respectfully handling blood, and Witnesses believe these Scriptures apply to blood and the four primary components which approximate "blood". An individual Jehovah's Witness is likely to accept a targeted treatment for a targeted need, including a treatment which includes a minor fraction derived from plasma, platelets, and/or red/white blood cells.
Learn more:
http://watchtower.org/e/hb/index.htm?article=article_07.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/vcnb/article_01.htm
2007-11-11 05:37:42 · answer #7 · answered by achtung_heiss 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
--THESE PREVIEW VIDEOS are what Physicians, surgeons, anesthesiologists (of whom the most are not Jehovah's witnesses) say about the balanced decisions we make for NO BLOOD!
--THIS FIRST VIDEO , covers patients needs & RIGHTS(legality rights)
"Transfusion-Alternative Health Care—Meeting Patient Needs and Rights":
http://www.watchtower.org/e/vcnr/article_01.htm
***Transfusion-Alternative Strategies—Simple, Safe, Effective:
http://www.watchtower.org/e/vcae/article_01.htm
***No Blood—Medicine Meets the Challenge:
http://www.watchtower.org/e/vcnb/article_01.htm
--IF YOU want the truth you could view these brief yet highly accurate presentations!(PREVIEWS of the 28-minute video "No Blood—Medicine Meets the Challenge".
--IF NOT you could continue in your predjudiced view of us and our Biblical stand, THAT has also been seen to have MAJOR health benefits!
**(Acts 15:28-29) “28 For the holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to YOU, except these necessary things, 29 to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication. If YOU carefully keep yourselves from these things, YOU will prosper. GOOD HEALTH (my caps) to YOU!””
==UPDATE====
--Were you aware that 10's of thousands(if not more) of deaths earth wide can definitely be attributed to the USE OF BLOOD?
--WERE YOU ALSO aware that none can be definetly be attributed to not be given blood, UNLESS THERE is no blood left in a persons circulatory system, what-so-ever!
--WHICH IS INDEED VERY VERY RARE!
=======UPDATE 2=========
*** *** hb p. 30 Blood: Whose Choice and Whose Conscience?
by J. Lowell Dixon, M.D.
--REPRINTED BY PERMISSION of the New York State Journal of Medicine, 1988; 88:463-464, copyright by the Medical Society of the State of New York.
--On the walls of most hospitals, one sees displayed the “Patient’s Bill of Rights.” One of these rights is informed consent, which might more accurately be called informed choice. After the patient is informed of the potential results of various treatments (or of nontreatment), it is his choice what he will submit to. At Albert Einstein Hospital in the Bronx, New York, a draft policy on blood transfusion and Jehovah’s Witnesses stated: “Any adult patient who is not incapacitated has the right to refuse treatment no matter how detrimental such a refusal may be to his health.”2
--While physicians may voice concerns about ethics or liability, courts have stressed the supremacy of patient choice.3 The New York Court of Appeals stated that “the patient’s right to determine the course of his own treatment [is] paramount . . . [A] doctor cannot be held to have violated his legal or professional responsibilities when he honors the right of a competent adult patient to decline medical treatment.”4 That court has also observed that “the ethical integrity of the medical profession, while important, cannot outweigh the fundamental individual rights here asserted. It is the needs and desires of the individual, not the requirements of the institution, that are paramount.”5
2007-11-11 01:29:15 · answer #8 · answered by THA 5 · 3⤊ 1⤋
This question keeps reoccurring. And as said already She died from complications. The blood most likely would not have saved her.
She died having the belief she would be rewarded for sticking to the command to abstain from blood. Here reward would be living in Paradise forever with those children. Much better than 50 years now with them watching them having to survive in this world.
And in answer to those who say Blood transfusions are not mentioned in the bible, true but it does say to abstain. If your doctor told you to abstain from alcohol as it could kill you since your liver is so damaged would it then be Ok if you were to not drink it but insert it intravenously?
2007-11-11 00:05:42 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 6⤊ 1⤋
In the Uk , the answer is no.
That was the main point of the article that I read on this subject.
Some people just never seem to comprehend or understand that tempting God is not something we are supposed to be doing.
The bible states that we are NOT to eat many things in the old testament.
THe bible never states in the old or the new testament that we cannot give the blood of life to one another. Just dont DRINK it.
My goodness, next time you get a paper cut, whatever you do, do not suck on the wound, which is a common and normal occurance because the saliva actually does have an anelgisic effect, BUT, you will of course, be tasting blood!!
Use the common sense God gave you, and stop reading more or less into an already perfect word.
2007-11-10 13:50:53 · answer #10 · answered by cindy 6 · 3⤊ 5⤋