Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
SIR
There is nothing wrong with Dr Gillon's suggestion to doctors that they ask Jehovah's Witness patients why they refuse a blood transfusions and present alternative viewpoints.1 However, enforcing the argument with reference to fellow believers who do accept a transfusion will be perceived by many believers as a contradictio in terminis. Since the dualistic theology of the Jehovah's Witnesses hardly accommodates doctrinal ambivalence, any member who wilfully infringes basic teachings is simply considered a non-member.2 Worse than that, the umbrella organisation will anathematise such an unrepentant transgressor and symbolically rank him or her with the persistent fool in Proverbs 26, who, “just like a dog, is returning to its own vomit”.3 Viewed within this context, one may wonder about the advisability of referring to these and similar dissident opinions.
References
Other content recommended for you
- Refusal of potentially life-saving blood transfusions by Jehovah's Witnesses: should doctors explain that not all JWs think it's religiously required?
- Medical confidentiality and the protection of Jehovah's Witnesses' autonomous refusal of blood
- Jehovah's Witnesses and autonomy: honouring the refusal of blood transfusions
- Bioethical aspects of the recent changes in the policy of refusal of blood by Jehovah's Witnesses
- Transfusion contracts for Jehovah’s Witnesses receiving organ transplants: ethical necessity or coercive pact?
- Successful treatment of total placenta previa by multidisciplinary therapy in a Jehovah’s Witness patient who refused blood transfusions
- Applying the four principles
- The ethics of policy writing: how should hospitals deal with moral disagreement about controversial medical practices?
- Why some Jehovah's Witnesses accept blood and conscientiously reject official Watchtower Society blood policy
- Management of placenta percreta in a Jehovah’s Witness patient