I was watching a Doctor show and I was wondering. I work in a hospital and just this week we had one admitted with a hemoglobin of 5.0, which is critical and life threatening, and each day it kept dropping. He refused the transfusion. Despite the best efforts of the staff, he died.
I am really saddened that someone is willing to believe in a religion so vehemently that they are willing to die for it.
Edit: I am wondering why all the thumbs down? It is a true story. Only few die, most get better treatment.
Sometimes physicians themselves cause complications by delaying treatment because they refuse to treat JW's for refusing blood.
To the one person who answered and said the parents let their kids die, that's super-ridiculous! They would not come to the hospital to be treated at all if they wanted them to die! They come to get skilled medical treatment and make sure they are well-informed of risks and benefits of any of the suggested treatments. They, like anyone else, have a right to choose which medical treatment they want to accept or which medical treatment they do not want.
Many JW's refuse blood and survive and quickly recover. Much faster than a person who accepts blood transfusions. With transfusions, there are also very potential long term complications including fatal viruses acquired through blood they receive. This remains a serious threat. If a person is conscious and informed they need a transfusion, they must sign a medical release stating that they know there are serious risks associated with blood transfusions including death. Not very many. But you can be sure the news loves to sensationalize it when a JW refuses a blood transfusion. Many times they do not report the outcome where they completely recover. What they rarely report is the very real and dangerous risks of accepting blood transfusions. Take a look at some of these facts:
"Approximately 1 in 100 transfusions are accompanied by fever, chills, or urticaria [hives]. . . . Approximately 1 in 6,000 red cell transfusions results in a hemolytic transfusion reaction. This is a severe immunologic reaction that may occur acutely or in a delayed fashion some days after the transfusion; it may result in acute [kidney] failure, shock, intravascular coagulation, and even death."鈥擭ational Institutes of Health (NIH) conference, 1988.
When doctors transplant a heart, a liver, or another organ, the recipient's immune system may sense the foreign tissue and reject it. Yet, a transfusion is a tissue transplant. Even blood that has been "properly" cross matched can suppress the immune system. At a conference of pathologists, the point was made that hundreds of medical papers "have linked blood transfusions to immunologic responses."鈥?quot;Case Builds Against Transfusions," Medical World News, December 11, 1989.
The journal Cancer (February 15, 1987) gave the results of a study done in the Netherlands: "In the patients with colon cancer, a significant adverse effect of transfusion on long-term survival was seen. In this group there was a cumulative 5-year overall survival of 48% for the transfused and 74% for the nontransfused patients." Physicians at the University of Southern California followed up on a hundred patients who underwent cancer surgery. "The recurrence rate for all cancers of the larynx was 14% for those who did not receive blood and 65% for those who did. For cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, and nose or sinus, the recurrence rate was 31% without transfusions and 71% with transfusions."鈥擜nnals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology, March 1989.
Studies show that patients receiving blood are more prone to infection. Dr. P. I. Tartter did a study of colorectal surgery. Of patients given transfusions, 25 percent developed infections, compared with 4 percent of those who received no transfusions. He reports: "Blood transfusions were associated with infectious complications when given pre-, intra-, or postoperatively . . . The risk of postoperative infection increased progressively with the number of units of blood given." (The British Journal of Surgery, August 1988) Those attending a 1989 meeting of the American Association of Blood Banks learned this: Whereas 23 percent of those who received donor blood during hip-replacement surgery developed infections, those given no blood had no infections at all.
Techniques of Blood Transfusion (1982) addresses "other transfusion-associated infectious diseases," such as syphilis, cytomegalovirus infection, and malaria. It then says: "Several other diseases have also been reported to be transmitted by blood transfusion, including herpes virus infections, infectious mononucleosis (Epstein-Barr virus), toxoplasmosis, trypanosomiasis [African sleeping sickness and Chagas' disease], leishmaniasis, brucellosis [undulant fever], typhus, filariasis, measles, salmonellosis, and Colorado tick fever."
According to U.S.News & World Report (May 1, 1989), about 5 percent of those given blood in the United States get hepatitis鈥?75,000 people a year. About half become chronic carriers, and at least 1 in 5 develop cirrhosis or cancer of the liver. It is estimated that 4,000 die. Imagine the headlines you would read if a jumbo jet crashed, killing all aboard. But 4,000 deaths amount to a full jumbo jet crashing every month!
The Journal of the American Medical Association (January 5, 1990) showed that a year can pass before antibodies of the disease are detectable by the test. Meanwhile, people transfused with the blood may face ruined livers鈥攁nd death. Not even close to as many non-JW's who die because of taking blood transfusions.
Blood transfusions weaken the immune system, and causes longer than normal recovery times, still carries the risk of transmitting serious diseases, not to mention the high risk of "blood transfusion reactions". A person got charged with murder because they stabbed a woman once and she refused blood transfusions later in the hospital that would realistically have easily saved her life. So he was convicted of murder, rather than a lesser charge. Under normal circumstances such a wound would have not been life threatening. Refusing blood transfusions does not mean letting one die. JWs, just like others, want the best medical treatment available for them. Nowadays blood transfusion is proven to be more risky than bloodless medical procedures.
The link below will help you understand our stand about blood transfusion.
http://www.watchtower.org/e/vcnr/article... I doubt any actual stats on this subject are kept. That said, the number of people who die, after agreeing to/not agreeing to, take a procedure is probably incalculable.
I am a Christian, one of Jehovah's Witnesses.
My Grandmother used to be on dialysis. They told her many times if she didn't accept blood she would NOT leave the hospital. This scare tactic made it harder for her to trust them over the years. It's umm... refreshing to hear the views of others on my religion. Usually all I get to hear is the occasional slam of a door.
Even I don't know the exact number, I'm afraid. I do feel that too many die and look forward to a time when no one will die (as corny as it sounds, it's true).
In the mean time, it is simply an issue of following what God tells us is the right (or the bible, whatever). It's one of the harder ones (in a life-death circumstance) to follow, but if you believe in everlasting life then staying faithful in this life as much as you're able is worth it.
(And about the guy who got the murder charge when the lady he stabbed totally could have lived? Really? You're really going to use that? He stabbed her. The killing someone is a risk you kinda take when you stab people) i do not know the numbers but here in canada i have heard many that have died there was one case that the government came in and took a little girl to the hospital because her parents were letting her die It happens occasionally.
I have never understood this myself.
If my children needed one, I would hold everyone at gunpoint and draw the blood myself if I needed to. I know a guy who was JW & he said he lost 70% of his blood & they pumped him with saline & he still lives...
Not sure about the stats for that one though. Agree with the first answerer. Btw, JW is a weird dangerous cult. Stay away from it. They only die once ! one is too many Too many. I particularly resent that doctrine since it teaches that their "God" would have rather I died in surgery than receive a blood transfusion.
That is an incredibly stupid doctrine.
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