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You Have the Right to ChooseHow Can Blood Save Your Life?
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or that there are children to be supported. “Those are legal fictions,” the book says. “Competent adults are entitled to refuse treatment.”
Some who insist on transfusing blood ignore the fact that Witnesses do not decline all therapies. They reject just one therapy, which even experts say is fraught with danger. Usually a medical problem can be managed in a variety of ways. One has this risk, another that risk. Can a court or a doctor paternalistically know which risk is “in your best interests”? You are the one to judge that. Jehovah’s Witnesses are firm that they do not want someone else to decide for them; it is their personal responsibility before God.
If a court forced an abhorrent treatment on you, how might this affect your conscience and the vital element of your will to live? Dr. Konrad Drebinger wrote: “It would certainly be a misguided form of medical ambition that would lead one to force a patient to accept a given therapy, overruling his conscience, so as to treat him physically but dealing his psyche a mortal blow.”—Der Praktische Arzt, July 1978.
LOVING CARE FOR CHILDREN
Court cases regarding blood mainly involve children. On occasion, when loving parents have respectfully asked that nonblood management be used, some medical personnel have sought court backing to give blood. Of course, Christians agree with laws or court action to prevent child abuse or neglect. Perhaps you have read of cases in which some parent brutalized a child or denied it all medical care. How tragic! Clearly, the State can and should step in to protect a neglected child. Still, it is easy to see how very different it is when a caring parent requests high-quality nonblood medical therapy.
These court cases usually focus on a child in a hospital. How did the youngster get there, and why? Almost always the concerned parents brought their child to get quality care. Even as Jesus was interested in children, Christian parents care for their children. The Bible speaks of ‘a nursing mother cherishing her own children.’ Jehovah’s Witnesses have such deep love for their children.—1 Thessalonians 2:7; Matthew 7:11; 19:13-15.
Naturally, all parents make decisions affecting their children’s safety and life: Will the family use gas or oil to heat the home? Will they take a child on a long-distance drive? May he go swimming? Such matters involve risks, even life-and-death ones. But society recognizes parental discretion, so parents are granted the major voice in nearly all decisions affecting their children.
In 1979 the U.S. Supreme Court stated clearly: “The law’s concept of the family rests on a presumption that parents possess what a child lacks in maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment required for making life’s difficult decisions. . . . Simply because the decision of a parent [on a medical matter] involves risks does not automatically transfer the power to make that decision from the parents to some agency or officer of the state.”—Parham v. J.R.
That same year the New York Court of Appeals ruled: “The most significant factor in determining whether a child is being deprived of adequate medical care . . . is whether the parents have provided an acceptable course of medical treatment for their child in light of all the surrounding circumstances. This inquiry cannot be posed in terms of whether the parent has made a ‘right’ or a ‘wrong’ decision, for the present state of the practice of medicine, despite its vast advances, very seldom permits such definitive conclusions. Nor can a court assume the role of a surrogate parent.”—In re Hofbauer.
Recall the example of parents choosing between surgery and antibiotics. Each therapy would have its own risks. Loving parents are responsible to weigh risks, benefits, and other factors and then to make a choice. In this connection, Dr. Jon Samuels (Anesthesiology News, October 1989) suggested a review of Guides to the Judge in Medical Orders Affecting Children, which took this position:
“Medical knowledge is not sufficiently advanced to enable a physician to predict with reasonable certainty that his patient will live or die . . . If there is a choice of procedures—if, for example, the doctor recommends a procedure which has an 80 per cent chance of success but which the parents disapprove, and the parents have no objection to a procedure which has only a 40 per cent chance of success—the doctor must take the medically riskier but parentally unobjectionable course.”
In view of the many lethal hazards in medical use of blood that have surfaced and because there are effective alternative ways of management, might not avoiding blood even carry the lower risk?
Naturally, Christians weigh many factors if their child needs surgery. Every operation, with or without the use of blood, has risks. What surgeon gives guarantees? The parents may know that skilled physicians have had fine success with bloodless surgery on Witness children. So even if a physician or a hospital official has another preference, rather than cause a stressful and time-consuming legal battle, is it not reasonable for them to work with the loving parents? Or parents may transfer their child to another hospital where the staff is experienced in handling such cases and willing to do so. In fact, nonblood management will more likely be quality care, for it can help the family “to achieve legitimate medical and nonmedical goals,” as we noted earlier.
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The Blood That Really Saves LivesHow Can Blood Save Your Life?
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The Blood That Really Saves Lives
Certain points are clear from the foregoing information. Though many people view them as lifesaving, blood transfusions are fraught with risks. Each year thousands die as a result of transfusions; multitudes more get very sick and face long-term consequences. So, even from a physical standpoint, there is wisdom right now in heeding the Biblical command to ‘abstain from blood.’—Acts 15:28, 29.
Patients are protected from many hazards if they request nonblood medical management. Skilled physicians who have accepted the challenge of applying this on Jehovah’s
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