# *Hospital Ethics Survey

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Posted by Bibleman [Bibleman] on November 13, 1999 at 03:10:09 {OA5YBxH8IAMSSTtTA17sslyACFuF8c}:

In Reply to: Hospital Ethics Survey posted by Rick on November 12, 1999 at 12:46:11:

Hello Rick,

Interesting topic.

I don't think it is a matter of "ethical" since many hospitals decide on what they will and will not do. A JW hospital, for instance, would never perform abortions, would they?

But one thing you might not have considered with respect to medical treatments and that is for many elderly persons, and some I suppose with terminal illnesses, there is a standard "DNR" (do not resuscitate) order that patients and their children often sign. The general idea is that they don't want the agressive and invasive treatments that could be performed to extend unduly the life of someone they know is going to die anyway. They just insist that the patient is made comfortable.

But "ethnically" what they are doing is refusing a life-saving treatment and that choice is being respected by the doctors. So they just let some patients die peacefully instead of any "heroic" measures to save them.

You could apply that concept to a dying JW who is so critically injured that only an emergency blood transfusion would save them. As far as they are concerned, they are past that point. They have a terminal condition and they don't want "heroic" measures performed. So it is like another type of a DNR order that doctors are used to performing.

Or how about this scenario: You have two mothers, one who wants to have a child but who is suffering a theatened abortion, and another mother near the end of her third trimester who came in to have an induced saline abortion.

They are in the O.R. at the same time when the abortions take place. And as is sometimes the case, the fetus is still living and breathing on it's own when it comes out. So what do the doctor do? In the case of the woman who wants her child, all the herotic measures to save the baby are immediately undergone and a whole assembly team of experts do everything possible to keep that baby alive.

But in the case of hte mother who had the abortion induced and the child is born viable, which does happen sometimes, the child is left on a petri dish to die on its own.

So it makes you ponder how on one hand there is such an emphasis on SAVING THAT LIFE AT ALL COSTS! in our Society and "Oh how cruel the Witnesses are to have all this people murdered by refusing blood." And then on the other hand, millions of lives are aborted by women who kill their own babies every year because they don't want the financial burden of another child. So where is the real respect for life?

So what your scenario suggests is that hospitals should be FORCED to impose a medical procedure on persons whether or not their religious conscience causes them to exercise their legal right to refuse certain medical treatments.

So is the Blood Reform movement among Jehovah's witnesses just another version of the Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice debate? Especially since blood is not a 100% safe procedure and some of the risks are absolutely deadly?

HERE'S YOUR QUESTION RICK:

If you had lost a lot of blood (Heaven forbid) in an auto accident and needed blood, but the only blood available that was your type was blood which had been recently tested to have the AIDS virus. Would you choose to die or to have the AIDs virulent blood?

Do you think the hospital, in this emergency, has a right to force you to have that blood?

Cheers,
Bibleman

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