So recently I’ve been researching more on Jehovahs witnesses. What’s really getting me angry is the refusal of blood and how JW parents will not allow their kids to get blood transfusions. This makes me so furious. People dying from easily preventable things makes me incredible frustrated, especially because this can hit me close to home.
So I guess this post if for any ex JW. When did you realize that this is harmful and, more importantly, how did you realize this? What would the best way to figuratively hold a mirror up to a JW and realize this is ridiculous and harmful?
Do Jehovah’s Witnesses wear eyeglasses; and, if so, wouldn’t that be a tacit rejection of God’s plan for their lives? Would it not be more appropriate to simply go blind as God had intended them to?
The wearing of corrective lenses to spare one’s sight in contravention of God’s will and the rejection of blood transfusions which might otherwise save one’s life cannot be reconciled.
JWs are hypocrites.
All religious people are . Nobody goes w " what god gave me ". If u take medicine , like u said eye glasses , to not mention make up and plastic surgery !
Evolution will take care of this . Not a thing we can do w those in acute / trauma setting. Elderly or young or just Bcz of trauma / surgery , we are not allowed to transfuse . When u come to my ED w a hemoglobin of 5 or 6 and u refuse the only thing that will give u back your breathing , mental clarity , and in short your life , then I truly wish u take your behind back to your house and stay there . Instead of getting a bed in a busy trauma level 1 hospital where critical care is delivered and patients need every bed and every doc and nurse to survive .
All I can do for u is give u fluids and iron . Go home and pray to god . Sad for the kids . However , regardless if these kids will had be allowed to a transfusion , chances are , w these parents , the future looks attached to mental and psych care . ?
Do not blaspheme the Holy Jeans. Everyone knows that Levi's are the One True Jean.
Seriously though, voice recognition issues aside, I'm not a former JW but it's my observation that every sect has some socially awkward shibboleth to get you invested in so that it actually becomes more, rather than less, difficult to leave, because you have more personal wrongness to admit and own up to.
For the JWs it's placing yourself and your family in jeopardy with the deliberately obtuse interpretation of the OT prohibition against eating meat with blood in it. For Mormons, it's magic underwear and forced door-to-door proselytization, for the Old Order Amish it's funny beards and technological ludditeism and Rumspringa, etc. Even my relatively tame evangelical handlers would get you deeply invested in quasi-intellectual theological arguments that defined your personal identity.
In high school 40 years ago I argued this with a JW. He talked about a JW doctor who was working on a blood substitute and how it would save millions. Hmmm. It ain't here yet, and millions aren't saved.
Addendum: there are some blood substitute out there, but not for large scale use (as in can't take over for all blood) and some still need to be infused with plasma. The most used one is for animals.
This issue caused a change in the law in the UK in the 1990, allowing hospitals to apply to a judge for a patient below the age of majority to be made a ward of the hospital when parental religious belief puts the child's life in danger.
The judge must make a decision and hand down a decision withing a matter of two or so hours, not sure exactly of the time limit.
The unfortunate consequence for ardent JWs in this country is that the first time this was done the parents were excommunicated for taking the child back, in the second case the parents refused to take the child home claiming he was no longer their son but a demon with impure blood.
These people are fuck wits.
One thing Jehovs are good for though is getting Mormons to deconvert, you ask them why it would be wrong to become one, show them some research on the cult and you can actually see the light dawning as they realise, "everything that is wrong with Kingdom Hall is something we do under another name"