The experience of Aaron Lee Washburn, sixteen years old, was similar. He had been in a vehicle accident and suffered multiple fractures of the head and other areas. At a medical center in Dallas his parents clearly stated their rejection of blood transfusions. At first this was respected. But three days later the surgeon who was to operate sought a court order to force a blood transfusion. He told the judge that surgery could not be done without it. But then other surgeons were given the case. They respected the parents’ stand on blood and proceeded to operate. The entire operative period lasted seven and a half hours. No blood was used. The operation was a success and was widely acknowledged in press reports.

Release from Responsibility

The damages from blood transfusions have created huge legal problems. Doctors and hospitals have been sued for large amounts of money. This became far more serious a problem when not long ago an American state supreme court ruled that hospitals can indeed be held liable for damages resulting from a blood transfusion.

For example, late in 1973 a young pregnant woman, Connie Reavis, refused her doctor’s recommendation to take blood. The doctor and hospital in Portland, Oregon, took the matter to court. Circuit Court Judge Berkeley Lent approved the petition to force blood. Mrs. Reavis refused to comply with the order. She contacted doctors in Seattle who agreed not to use blood. At the University of Washington Hospital they performed a successful cesarean section and delivered an eleven-pound eleven-ounce baby girl. No blood was used.

In another instance, Curtis Dunn and his wife Patsy, Jehovah’s witnesses, found how misleading signed forms can be. Expecting her third child, they signed a form releasing the doctors and the hospital from any liability for her not taking blood.

After the child was born it developed anemia. Physicians of a Houston, Texas, hospital took the infant away from the parents by a court order and gave it a blood transfusion. The action was taken suddenly. No allowance was made for a hearing of the matter first. But what had happened to the form they signed?

Closer scrutiny of the release form was revealing. The form stated only that it would release the physicians and the hospital from any responsibility for the parents’ decision. It did not say the parents’ decision would be honored under all circumstances. So such forms may be relatively valueless. They can be deceptive, lulling trusting patients into a false sense of security.