From its beginning in 1998, AJWRB (Advocates for Jehovah’s Witness Reform on Blood) has served as a resource for those who pay the heaviest price for the Watchtower Society’s (WTS) irrational policy on blood, and medical treatments. Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) sacrifice their lives, and the lives of their children for these WTS policies, as their non JW family members and medical personnel are forced to stand by and watch them suffer needless, excruciating deaths.
AJWRB continues to make extensive efforts to communicate policy concerns to the leadership. The most up to date information is also shared with Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the physicians who treat them. The aim is not to directly influence personal choice about the use of blood or blood products, but to provide the necessary information to enable individual JWs to make truly informed decisions that meet the legal standard of informed consent.
JWs continue to be unduly influenced in their medical choices by WTS sanctioned coercion, and religious censure (excommunication or disassociation). The resulting shunning manifests as complete and total isolation from family members and friends, who themselves face excommunication should they fail to comply with WTS shunning requirements.
AJWRB is an international educational organization composed of volunteers, with the following goals:
- To assist physicians, and hospital administrators in actively seeking ways to stop compliance monitoring of JW patients by WT representatives who are required to report any deviation from WT policy.
- To provide physicians with the knowledge, and necessary tools to equip them to have meaningful interactions with their JW patients, and promote “non-interventional paternalism”.
- To better inform JWs in the hope they will make life saving choices for themselves and their families.
- To promote meaningful change to WTS policy that enforces compliance through coercion, and misinformation.
- To support those who have been traumatized by WTS policies on blood transfusion and shunning, with special emphasis on those who were born to JW parents, and/or raised in the religion.
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