Posted by Snowball [Snowball] on November 29, 1999 at 22:46:45 {DGglKT6Uj2CuspFhnTUgzJJpNQgSp.}:
In Reply to: Bloodless Surg. 1/8 Awake posted by Liberal Elder on November 29, 1999 at 17:02:10:
Thank you for this prompt rebuttal to the Awake article. I have just read it today and was going to come online to ask if you had written a reply to it.
I applaud the advances in bloodless medicine and look forward to the day when homologous blood transplants may be a thing of the past, but this in no way alleviates the WTS from the tremendous bloodguilt they have heaped on themselves by making this medical proceedure a disfellowshipping offense.
On the first page of this article it gives the account of a brother Jose who needed a liver transplant. "'It was the shock of my life,' he says. Just four decades ago, liver transplants were unthinkable.Even in the 1970's, the survival rate was only about 30 percent. Today, however, liver transplants are routineley performed, with a much higher success rate."
Brother Jose had a suucessful operation. The footnote reads:"Jehovah's Witnesses view organ transplants as a matter of individual conscience."
As usual, though, their arguments are mostly conspicuous by what they LEAVE OUT. It says that 4 decades ago, brother Jose reminisces, liver transplants were not feasible. It fails to mention that just TWO decades ago, organ transplants were FORBIDEN for Jehovah's Witnesses! No acknowledgment is made about this past policy that WT members were obliged to obey as if it was solidly scriptural that organ transplants were the same as cannibalism and sustaining life by means of feeding on human flesh. No acknowledgement of all those who died or suffered in obedience to abstain from organ transplants. No acknowledgement of those who were disfellowshipped and cut off from family and loved ones for failing to obey the Governing Body. No acknowledgement that it was no more than a personal opinion that was passed on through the pages of the Watchtower magazine as "food at the proper time" for millions of trusting JWs to obey as if it was a command from God himself, only to have it dropped in 1980.
Also significant about this article is jujst how much they focus on the HEALTH aspects of the blood issue, when the JW stand is SUPPOSED to be about religious theological issues. There is only one tiny sentence that states in a matter-of-fact that JWs do not take transfusions for "Bible-based reasons", and then do not even quote in the paragraph the scriptures that supposedly prove their stand that they relegated to a footnote.
Again, I praise advances in bloodless surgery, but abhor the deceptive argumentation and bloodguilt of the WTS. One of my best friends, now dead, was one of those "gunieu pigs". (Nov 22nd, '96 Awake- "Its only temporary")
Snowball