A Family Medical Dilemma

At the time of these events, if there was one thing people identified Jehovah’s Witnesses with, it was their refusal of blood transfusions. I know it was a doctrine that I once believed was right for me and my family. If a medical emergency had arisen, a blood transfusion would not have been an option.

I, like many Jehovah’s Witnesses, hoped that such an emergency would never happen. But if it did, I was comforted by the thought that there were alternatives to blood transfusions, such as saline and dextrose. These were the kinds of alternatives the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society promoted in its literature as the preferred emergency non-blood choices.

Three years after my baptism as a Jehovah’s Witness, my daughter, who was seven years old at the time, fell very ill with severe tonsillitis. She lost a lot of weight due to the illness and became frail and weak. Our family doctor referred us to a nearby hospital for consultation, where we were advised that her tonsils should be removed.

However, the physician would not agree to perform the operation without assurance from me that blood could be used if a complication arose. I remember nervously asking him to review our booklet, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Question of Blood. That was all we had in those days for medical dilemmas. There were no Hospital Liaison Committees (HLCs) available to us at the time. The doctor said he was familiar with the booklet but refused to discuss the matter.

My wife and I were faced with our first dilemma related to the Watchtower’s doctrine on blood. Should we consent to the doctor’s wishes and hope things turned out okay? With some dismay, we left the hospital with our daughter and began to search for help elsewhere.

Eventually, we were directed to a practitioner described to us as qualified in alternative medicine. His advice included dietary restrictions and some medication. Our daughter subsequently regained her strength and health, although, at the time I wrote this account, the problem had never been fully resolved.

The question we struggled to answer

The refusal of blood transfusions was a subject that most Jehovah’s Witnesses would try to avoid when in the door-to-door ministry. This was a very emotional doctrine for people who were not Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Any response like “our child will be resurrected in the new world” or “Jehovah’s Witnesses have alternatives to blood” did not cut it. Frankly, that was of no comfort to a rational Jehovah’s Witness.

However, I never dreamed that one day I would be arguing that the Watchtower’s blood policy was very wrong. In fact, the blood transfusion issue is what finally led to my being expelled from the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses after eighteen years of service.

Researching the Jehovah’s Witness Blood Policy

I had been an elder in the congregation for many years, with teaching assignments, public talks, and responsibilities for providing spiritual support to fellow Witnesses. But as time went on, I began to have doubts about some of the information coming from the Watchtower.

During a particularly difficult time in my son’s life, I took some time off work. With spare time on my hands, I began reflecting on my life as a Jehovah’s Witness and browsing the internet—a big “no-no” in my Witness environment in 1998—for information about some of the doctrines of my faith.

On my internet journey, I found a website entitled “New Light on Blood” at ajwrb.org. I was flabbergasted by the enormous amount of information presented, both biblical and scientific, about the experiences of people affected by the blood policy and the history of the Watchtower’s shifting position regarding its medical prohibitions. This information caused me to rethink my belief about blood.

Eventually, I overturned my strongly entrenched beliefs, recalling 2 Corinthians 10:4, because the website provided well-researched information from medical professionals, appointed men in the congregations, former HLC members, and elders operating within the Watchtower organization.

Letters that brought no dialogue

I presented some of this new information in a letter to my congregational overseer. Then I sent letters to other elders I knew, inviting their comments. While I received no written responses, several of these elders visited me, but they would not talk about the issues. They were afraid to talk with me. To me, the organization had strangled their ability to comment.

However, I was asked to raise these questions about blood with elders at the Watchtower headquarters in London. I think they suggested this in the hope of shifting some of the responsibility away from themselves. So I did as requested and sent a letter.

The reply I received made no attempt to enter into a dialogue about my questions. Their response amounted to nothing more than a warning about apostates operating on the internet.

The Judicial Committee

A few weeks later, I received another visit from a local elder, telling me that a judicial committee had been formed and that I was invited to attend. A judicial committee was a group of elders who acted as judges to enforce Watchtower policy. In my case, the committee was organized to decide whether I was guilty of apostasy. I guess being an elder who circulated material raising questions about Watchtower policies was enough for them to charge me.

I agreed to attend the meeting in the hope of making at least one of them think differently about the blood transfusion doctrine and perhaps striking a chord in their hearts. I never expected them to agree with me, as that would have put them in the same precarious position as myself.

“I want mercy, not sacrifice”

During the meeting, I referred to Jesus’ words concerning the worship of God: “I want mercy, not sacrifice.” I also referred to his account of David and his men, who were in desperate need of food while David was on the run from King Saul. A priest gave them the sacred bread, something normally reserved for the priests.

I thought the same principle would reasonably apply today. To me, Jesus was demonstrating that the spirit behind the law was love. The religious leaders could not see this; that was why they objected to Jesus’ disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath.

Jesus prefaced that expression with the words “learn what this means.” In my view, Jehovah’s Witnesses as an organization had not learned this basic principle with regard to blood.

Changing rules and unanswered questions

There were other points I raised, such as how the Watchtower had shifted its position on blood over time. Some blood-derived products had become acceptable in medical treatment when they had once been viewed as unacceptable.

This became very confusing to the average Jehovah’s Witness, who was not trained in medical procedures or the chemistry of blood. I saw the development of the Hospital Liaison Committee arrangement as a response to these increasingly complicated rules. In my view, the blood policy had become messy, and the Watchtower was trying to maintain control over the issue.

For example, some serums containing blood-derived products became acceptable medicine to Watchtower policymakers. Their reasoning distinguished those treatments from feeding on blood.

“Abstaining from blood” is part of the instruction in Acts 15, on which the Watchtower bases much of its policy. I understood the context of those verses to concern eating blood. I also noted the Watchtower’s acknowledgment that a transfusion could be compared to a tissue transplant.

So my question remained: Are these tissue transplants “feeding on blood”?

At that time, I felt the Watchtower remained resolute in enforcing its prohibition despite the contradictions I saw in its reasoning.

Expulsion and the Cost of Disagreement

At the end of the judicial meeting, they informed me that I was expelled, or excommunicated. As I understood the rules then, this meant that fellow Jehovah’s Witnesses would no longer speak or socialize with me.

Finally, I remember asking, “Do you believe that you have carried out God’s justice here and acted with the love of Christ?” I asked because these men knew the hard work I had done in that congregation and the sincerity with which I had applied myself over many years. But all of that seemed irrelevant to them.

The presiding overseer told me coldly that I would “die at Armageddon” if I continued as I was. I left the meeting with a “goodbye.”

The irony of later changes

The irony of that whole episode was that the Watchtower could change its position again regarding blood or its components, and the same elders who judged me would have to argue in favor of changes to the policy over which I had been condemned as an apostate.

Indeed, just two years later, the Watchtower’s June 2000 guidance made acceptance of fractions derived from any of the four primary blood components a matter of individual conscience.⁵

This included fractions derived from red cells, such as hemoglobin—the cell’s most abundant protein and its principal oxygen-carrying fraction.^{5, 6}

For me, this highlighted the inconsistency of allowing products derived from blood while continuing to prohibit the components from which they came.

Finding the real truth—good science in this case—was not the issue as I saw it. Nor was it loyalty to Jesus Christ, the scriptures, or even one’s own conscience. Rather, I believed this was about control and repression, loyalty to the Watchtower Society and its man-made directives.

Ray Hemming