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Are Blood Transfusions Really Life Saving?

Jenny Collins

Active Member
You're clutching at straws. "The Red Cross has been involved in scandals, according to this book" is no indication whatsoever of the efficacy of necessity of blood transfusion as a medical procedure.
"According to this book"?? Do you think she could have written a damaging book and made stuff up? Ever hear of lawsuits for libel and slander!
 

Jenny Collins

Active Member
All this article states is that blood transfusions are often over-used, not that they are necessarily harmful - especially in cases where they are actually properly applied. Pointing to the fact that a given method can be misapplied doesn't diminish the actual function and effectiveness of the procedure when properly applied. In fact, just two years ago the same magazine posted this article, lauding the efforts of better blood transfusion practice and the benefits of it:

Moving the needle on transfusions | Today's Hospitalist

Also, copying and pasting articles verbatim (without providing a direct link to the source) is a poor way to demonstrate that you actually understand what the article is saying. It is also potentially breaking forum rules regarding spam.
You are doing exactly as I said you would! Deny my claims, say that I am "overstating" blah, blah! I come up with statistics, and you challenge them! I say I won't supply sources to you because you will just keep bickering, but I go ahead and supply them anyway! One by one, you try to challenge them all!
 

Jenny Collins

Active Member
You are doing exactly as I said you would! Deny my claims, say that I am "overstating" blah, blah! I come up with statistics, and you challenge them! I say I won't supply sources to you because you will just keep bickering, but I go ahead and supply them anyway! One by one, you try to challenge them all!
Yes, that article DID say that they were often harmful! Read it again
 

ImmortalFlame

Woke gremlin
F]en-flm mmsmwm - MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT BLOOD TRANSFUSION
www.transfusionmedicineauthority.com/Myths%20and%20Facts.pdf
of} Myths-Many doctors believe that blood transfusions are safe. Blood transfusion ... Nobel Prize winner for Medicine 1984 Danish scientist Niels Jerne has refused blood transfusion. He narrated "A person's blood is like his fingerprints. There.
Yep. Seems legit. Although I have read he almost died as a result, and it is worth noting he was working in a time when we still didn't enough too much about genetics (the human genome was not fully sequenced until the year 2003, while Niels Jerne died in 1994). In any case, one Nobel prize winner refusing a blood transfusion (and nearly dying as a result) doesn't qualify the position for anything better than a fringe, largely pseudo-scientific notion. Do you have the exact numbers on how many Nobel prize winners have had transfusions?
 

Jenny Collins

Active Member
Mark 13:13-16 talks about those who have eyes but don't see, and ears, but don't hear! You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink! You can lay out logic in front of someone, but if they are in denial, not much can be done! You can show a mountain of evidence, but if they don't want it they will shoot it down and choose the lie! The Bible talks of those who exchange the lie for the truth
 

ImmortalFlame

Woke gremlin
You are doing exactly as I said you would! Deny my claims, say that I am "overstating" blah, blah!
I'm not denying anything - I read the article, and all it says is literally what I said. What do you think the article implies?

I come up with statistics, and you challenge them!
Actually, I didn't challenge the statistics. I just explained that the statistics don't mean that blood transfusions as a practice are actually harmful - all the article says is that they are over-used.

I say I won't supply sources to you because you will just keep bickering, but I go ahead and supply them anyway! One by one, you try to challenge them all!
So you just expect people to completely and unskeptically accept whatever facts you show them and agree with your interpretation of them?

Do you or do you not understand what the article you posted ACTUALLY says? What point do you think it is making that backs up your argument that blood transfusions, properly applied, have a negative effect overall?
 

ImmortalFlame

Woke gremlin
It is one article! Do you think that all that I have said can be found in ONE article? I am WELL READ, I don't stop at ONE article
Erm, no. I never said that you WOULD stop at one article. I was just RESPONDING to it.

You seriously need to calm down and stop putting words in my mouth.
 

Jenny Collins

Active Member
Yep. Seems legit. Although I have read he almost died as a result, and it is worth noting he was working in a time when we still didn't enough too much about genetics (the human genome was not fully sequenced until the year 2003, while Niels Jerne died in 1994). In any case, one Nobel prize winner refusing a blood transfusion (and nearly dying as a result) doesn't qualify the position for anything better than a fringe, largely pseudo-scientific notion. Do you have the exact numbers on how many Nobel prize winners have had transfusions?

I don't know that he almost died or not, your words, but would you like to hear some names of people that did die FROM transfusions? Arthur Ashe, Ryan White, Elizabeth Glaesar, Linda Lovelace! Lovelace not immediately! She lived many years with Hepatitis before finally succumbing! True these are mostly AIDS cases from the past, but so was Niels situation the past, and people are still catching disease from blood and we do not know the next disease that will turn up
 

ImmortalFlame

Woke gremlin
I don't know that he almost died or not, your words, but would you like to hear some names of people that did die FROM transfusions? Arthur Ashe, Ryan White, Elizabeth Glaesar, Linda Lovelace! Lovelace not immediately! She lived many years with Hepatitis before finally succumbing! True these are mostly AIDS cases from the past, but so was Niels situation the past, and people are still catching disease from blood and we do not know the next disease that will turn up
The death rate from transfusions is 0.0008%. I could just as easily point out the numerous deaths from lightning strikes and use it as an argument to say nobody should ever step foot outside as a result. To contrast your list, here is a website naming alleged fatalities of JW's refusing blood transfusions:

Jehovah's Witnesses - List of deaths of JWs who rejected blood transfusion
 

ImmortalFlame

Woke gremlin
It is ONE piece in me putting together an argument that the history of blood is dangerous for many reasons! Other blood institutions back then had bad reputations too!
Then please briefly explain that rather than copying and pasting a link to a book that I have no idea of the actual validity or reliability of.
 

ImmortalFlame

Woke gremlin
"According to this book"?? Do you think she could have written a damaging book and made stuff up? Ever hear of lawsuits for libel and slander!
So people never write stuff that is inaccurate or dishonest? Have you ever read David Icke? Or Holy Blood and the Holy Grail? Are you suggesting there are no books out there alleging the benefits of blood transfusions?
 

ImmortalFlame

Woke gremlin
Mark 13:13-16 talks about those who have eyes but don't see, and ears, but don't hear! You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink! You can lay out logic in front of someone, but if they are in denial, not much can be done! You can show a mountain of evidence, but if they don't want it they will shoot it down and choose the lie! The Bible talks of those who exchange the lie for the truth
I have fairly judged your evidence and found it lacking. It simply doesn't support your argument.
 

Jenny Collins

Active Member
Scientists are now studying the effect of transfused blood on the body's defense, or immune, system. What might that mean for you or for a relative who needs surgery?



"Approximately 1 in 100 transfusions are accompanied by fever, chills, or urticarial [hives] Approximately 1 in 6,000 red cell transfusions results in a hemolytic transfusion reaction. This is a severe immunologic reaction that may occur acutely or in a delayed fashion some days after the transfusion; it may result in acute [kidney] failure, shock, intravascular coagulation, and even death."—National Institutes of Health (NIH) conference, 1988.



When doctors transplant a heart, a liver, or another organ, the recipient's immune system may sense the foreign tissue and reject it. Yet, a transfusion is a tissue transplant. Even blood that has been "properly" cross matched can suppress the immune system. At a conference of pathologists, the point was made that hundreds of medical papers "have linked blood transfusions to immunologic responses."—"Case Builds Against Transfusions," Medical World News, December 11, 1989.



A prime task of your immune system is detecting and destroying malignant (cancer) cells. Could suppressed immunity lead to cancer and death? Note two reports.



The journal Cancer (February 15, 1987) gave the results of a study done in the Netherlands: "In the patients with colon cancer, a significant adverse effect of transfusion on long-term survival was seen. In this group there was a cumulative 5-year overall survival of 48% for the transfused and 74% for the no transfused patients." Physicians at the University of Southern California followed up on a hundred patients who underwent cancer surgery. "The recurrence rate for all cancers of the larynx was 14% for those who did not receive blood and 65% for those who did. For cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, and nose or sinus, the recurrence rate was 31% without transfusions and 71% with transfusions."—Annals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology, March 1989.



Danish scientist Niels Jerne shared the 1984 Nobel Prize for Medicine. When asked why he refused a blood transfusion, he said: "A person's blood is like his fingerprints—there are no two types of blood that are exactly alike."



What do such studies suggest regarding transfusions? In his article "Blood Transfusions and Surgery for Cancer," Dr. John S. Spratt concluded: "The cancer surgeon may need to become a bloodless percent developed infections, compared with 4 percent of those who received no transfusions. He reports: "Blood transfusions were associated with infectious complications when given pre-, intra-, or postoperatively … The risk of postoperative infection increased progressively with the number of units of blood given." (The British Journal of Surgery, August 1988) Those attending a 1989 meeting of the American Association of Blood Banks learned this: Whereas 23 percent of those who received donor blood during hip-replacement surgery developed infections, those given no blood had no infections at all.



Dr. John A. Collins wrote concerning this effect of blood transfusions: "It would be ironic indeed if a 'treatment' which has very little evidence of accomplishing anything worthwhile should subsequently be found to intensify one of the main problems faced by such patients."—World Journal of Surgery, February 1987.



DISEASE FREE OR FRAUGHT WITH DANGER?



Blood-borne disease worries conscientious physicians and many patients. Which disease? Frankly, you cannot limit it just to one; there are indeed many.



After discussing the more well-known diseases, Techniques of Blood Transfusion (1982) addresses "other transfusion-associated infectious diseases," such as syphilis, cytomegalovirus infection, and malaria. It then says: "Several other diseases have also been reported to be transmitted by blood transfusion, including herpes virus infections, infectious mononucleosis (Epstein-Barr virus), toxoplasmosis, trypanosomiasis [African sleeping sickness and Chagas' disease], leishmaniasis, brucellosis [undulant fever], typhus, filariasis, measles, salmonellosis, and Colorado tick fever."

surgeon."—The American Journal of Surgery, September 1986.



Another primary task of your immune system is to defend against infection. So it is understandable that some studies show that patients receiving blood are more prone to infection. Dr. P. I. Tartter did a study of colorectal surgery. Of patients given transfusions, 25



Actually, the list of such diseases is growing. You may have read headlines such as "Lyme Disease from a Transfusion? It's Unlikely, but Experts Are Wary." How safe is blood from someone testing positive for Lyme disease? A panel of health officials were asked if they would accept such blood. "All of them answered no, although no one recommended discarding blood from such donors." How should the public feel about banked blood that experts themselves would not accept? —The New York Times, July 18, 1989.

A second reason for concern is that blood collected in one land where a certain disease abounds may be used far away, where neither the public nor the physicians are alert to the danger. With today's increase in travel, including refugees and immigrants, the risk is growing that a strange disease may be in a blood product.

Moreover, a specialist in infectious diseases warned: "The blood supply may have to be screened to prevent transmission of several disorders that were not previously considered infectious, including leukemia, lymphoma, and dementia [or Alzheimer's disease]."—Transfusion Medicine Reviews, January 1989.

Chilling as these risks are, others have created much wider fear.



THE AIDS PANDEMIC


"AIDS has changed forever the way doctors and patients think about blood. And that's not a bad idea, said the doctors gathered at the National Institutes of Health for a conference on blood transfusion."—Washington Post, July 5, 1988.

The AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) pandemic has, with a vengeance, awakened people to the danger of acquiring infectious diseases from blood. Millions are now infected. It is spreading out of control. And its death rate is virtually 100 percent.

AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which can be spread by blood. The modern plague of AIDS came to light in 1981. The very next year, health experts learned that the virus could probably be passed on in blood products. It is now admitted that the blood industry was slow to respond, even after tests were available to identify blood containing HIV antibodies. Testing of donor blood finally began in 1985, but even then it was not applied to blood products that were already on the shelf.

Thereafter the public was assured, 'The blood supply is now safe.' Later, however, it was revealed that there is a dangerous "window period" for AIDS. After a person is infected, it could be months before he produces detectable antibodies. Unaware that he harbors the virus, he might donate blood that would test negative. This has happened. People have developed AIDS after being transfused with such blood!



HIV VIRUS



The picture got even grimmer. The New England Journal of Medicine (June 1, 1989) reported on "Silent HIV Infections." It was established that people can carry the AIDS virus for years without its being detectable by current indirect tests. Some would like to minimize these as rare cases, but they prove "that the risk of AIDS transmission via blood and its components cannot be totally eliminated." (Patient Care, November 30, 1989) The disturbing conclusion: A negative test cannot be read as a clean bill of health. How many will yet get AIDS from blood?



THE NEXT SHOE? OR SHOES?


Many apartment dwellers have heard the thump of one shoe hitting the floor above them; they may then get tense awaiting the second. In the blood dilemma, no one knows how many deadly shoes may still hit.

The AIDS virus was designated HIV, but some experts now call it HIV-1. Why? Because they found another virus of the AIDS type (HIV-2). It can cause AIDS symptoms and is widespread in some areas. Moreover, it "is not consistently detected by the AIDS tests now in use here," reports The New York Times. (June 27, 1989) "The new findings … make it more difficult for blood banks to be sure a donation is safe."

Or what of distant relatives to the AIDS virus? A presidential commission (U.S.A.) said that one such virus "is believed to be the cause of adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma and a severe neurological disease." This virus is already in the blood donor population and can be spread in blood. People have a right to wonder, 'How effective is the blood-bank screening for such other viruses?'

Dr. Knud Lund-Olesen wrote: "Since… some persons in high-risk groups volunteer as donors because they are then automatically tested for AIDS, I feel that there is reason to be reluctant about accepting blood transfusion. Jehovah's Witnesses have refused this for many years. Did they look into the future?"—Ugeskrift for Læger (Doctors' Weekly), September 26, 1988.

Really, only time will tell how many blood-borne viruses are lurking in the blood supply. "The unknown may be more cause for concern than the known," writes Dr. Harold T. Meryman. "Transmissible viruses with incubation times measured in many years will be difficult to associate with transfusions and even more difficult to detect. The HTLV group is surely only the first of these to surface." (Transfusion Medicine Reviews, July 1989) "As if the AIDS epidemic were not misery enough, … a number of newly proposed or described risks of transfusion have drawn attention during the 1980's. It does not require great imagination to predict that other serious viral diseases exist and are transmitted by homologous transfusions."—Limiting Homologous Exposure: Alternative Strategies, 1989.

So many "shoes" have already dropped that the Centers for Disease Control recommends "universal precautions." That is, 'health-care workers should assume that all patients are infectious for HIV and other blood-borne pathogens.' With good reason, health-care workers and members of the public are reassessing their view of blood.

We cannot assume that all blood is yet being tested. For example, it is reported that by the start of 1989, about 80 percent of Brazil's blood banks were not under government control, nor were they testing for AIDS."
 

ImmortalFlame

Woke gremlin
Scientists are now studying the effect of transfused blood on the body's defense, or immune, system. What might that mean for you or for a relative who needs surgery?



"Approximately 1 in 100 transfusions are accompanied by fever, chills, or urticarial [hives] Approximately 1 in 6,000 red cell transfusions results in a hemolytic transfusion reaction. This is a severe immunologic reaction that may occur acutely or in a delayed fashion some days after the transfusion; it may result in acute [kidney] failure, shock, intravascular coagulation, and even death."—National Institutes of Health (NIH) conference, 1988.



When doctors transplant a heart, a liver, or another organ, the recipient's immune system may sense the foreign tissue and reject it. Yet, a transfusion is a tissue transplant. Even blood that has been "properly" cross matched can suppress the immune system. At a conference of pathologists, the point was made that hundreds of medical papers "have linked blood transfusions to immunologic responses."—"Case Builds Against Transfusions," Medical World News, December 11, 1989.



A prime task of your immune system is detecting and destroying malignant (cancer) cells. Could suppressed immunity lead to cancer and death? Note two reports.



The journal Cancer (February 15, 1987) gave the results of a study done in the Netherlands: "In the patients with colon cancer, a significant adverse effect of transfusion on long-term survival was seen. In this group there was a cumulative 5-year overall survival of 48% for the transfused and 74% for the no transfused patients." Physicians at the University of Southern California followed up on a hundred patients who underwent cancer surgery. "The recurrence rate for all cancers of the larynx was 14% for those who did not receive blood and 65% for those who did. For cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, and nose or sinus, the recurrence rate was 31% without transfusions and 71% with transfusions."—Annals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology, March 1989.



Danish scientist Niels Jerne shared the 1984 Nobel Prize for Medicine. When asked why he refused a blood transfusion, he said: "A person's blood is like his fingerprints—there are no two types of blood that are exactly alike."



What do such studies suggest regarding transfusions? In his article "Blood Transfusions and Surgery for Cancer," Dr. John S. Spratt concluded: "The cancer surgeon may need to become a bloodless percent developed infections, compared with 4 percent of those who received no transfusions. He reports: "Blood transfusions were associated with infectious complications when given pre-, intra-, or postoperatively … The risk of postoperative infection increased progressively with the number of units of blood given." (The British Journal of Surgery, August 1988) Those attending a 1989 meeting of the American Association of Blood Banks learned this: Whereas 23 percent of those who received donor blood during hip-replacement surgery developed infections, those given no blood had no infections at all.



Dr. John A. Collins wrote concerning this effect of blood transfusions: "It would be ironic indeed if a 'treatment' which has very little evidence of accomplishing anything worthwhile should subsequently be found to intensify one of the main problems faced by such patients."—World Journal of Surgery, February 1987.



DISEASE FREE OR FRAUGHT WITH DANGER?



Blood-borne disease worries conscientious physicians and many patients. Which disease? Frankly, you cannot limit it just to one; there are indeed many.



After discussing the more well-known diseases, Techniques of Blood Transfusion (1982) addresses "other transfusion-associated infectious diseases," such as syphilis, cytomegalovirus infection, and malaria. It then says: "Several other diseases have also been reported to be transmitted by blood transfusion, including herpes virus infections, infectious mononucleosis (Epstein-Barr virus), toxoplasmosis, trypanosomiasis [African sleeping sickness and Chagas' disease], leishmaniasis, brucellosis [undulant fever], typhus, filariasis, measles, salmonellosis, and Colorado tick fever."

surgeon."—The American Journal of Surgery, September 1986.



Another primary task of your immune system is to defend against infection. So it is understandable that some studies show that patients receiving blood are more prone to infection. Dr. P. I. Tartter did a study of colorectal surgery. Of patients given transfusions, 25



Actually, the list of such diseases is growing. You may have read headlines such as "Lyme Disease from a Transfusion? It's Unlikely, but Experts Are Wary." How safe is blood from someone testing positive for Lyme disease? A panel of health officials were asked if they would accept such blood. "All of them answered no, although no one recommended discarding blood from such donors." How should the public feel about banked blood that experts themselves would not accept? —The New York Times, July 18, 1989.

A second reason for concern is that blood collected in one land where a certain disease abounds may be used far away, where neither the public nor the physicians are alert to the danger. With today's increase in travel, including refugees and immigrants, the risk is growing that a strange disease may be in a blood product.

Moreover, a specialist in infectious diseases warned: "The blood supply may have to be screened to prevent transmission of several disorders that were not previously considered infectious, including leukemia, lymphoma, and dementia [or Alzheimer's disease]."—Transfusion Medicine Reviews, January 1989.

Chilling as these risks are, others have created much wider fear.



THE AIDS PANDEMIC


"AIDS has changed forever the way doctors and patients think about blood. And that's not a bad idea, said the doctors gathered at the National Institutes of Health for a conference on blood transfusion."—Washington Post, July 5, 1988.

The AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) pandemic has, with a vengeance, awakened people to the danger of acquiring infectious diseases from blood. Millions are now infected. It is spreading out of control. And its death rate is virtually 100 percent.

AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which can be spread by blood. The modern plague of AIDS came to light in 1981. The very next year, health experts learned that the virus could probably be passed on in blood products. It is now admitted that the blood industry was slow to respond, even after tests were available to identify blood containing HIV antibodies. Testing of donor blood finally began in 1985, but even then it was not applied to blood products that were already on the shelf.

Thereafter the public was assured, 'The blood supply is now safe.' Later, however, it was revealed that there is a dangerous "window period" for AIDS. After a person is infected, it could be months before he produces detectable antibodies. Unaware that he harbors the virus, he might donate blood that would test negative. This has happened. People have developed AIDS after being transfused with such blood!



HIV VIRUS



The picture got even grimmer. The New England Journal of Medicine (June 1, 1989) reported on "Silent HIV Infections." It was established that people can carry the AIDS virus for years without its being detectable by current indirect tests. Some would like to minimize these as rare cases, but they prove "that the risk of AIDS transmission via blood and its components cannot be totally eliminated." (Patient Care, November 30, 1989) The disturbing conclusion: A negative test cannot be read as a clean bill of health. How many will yet get AIDS from blood?



THE NEXT SHOE? OR SHOES?


Many apartment dwellers have heard the thump of one shoe hitting the floor above them; they may then get tense awaiting the second. In the blood dilemma, no one knows how many deadly shoes may still hit.

The AIDS virus was designated HIV, but some experts now call it HIV-1. Why? Because they found another virus of the AIDS type (HIV-2). It can cause AIDS symptoms and is widespread in some areas. Moreover, it "is not consistently detected by the AIDS tests now in use here," reports The New York Times. (June 27, 1989) "The new findings … make it more difficult for blood banks to be sure a donation is safe."

Or what of distant relatives to the AIDS virus? A presidential commission (U.S.A.) said that one such virus "is believed to be the cause of adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma and a severe neurological disease." This virus is already in the blood donor population and can be spread in blood. People have a right to wonder, 'How effective is the blood-bank screening for such other viruses?'

Dr. Knud Lund-Olesen wrote: "Since… some persons in high-risk groups volunteer as donors because they are then automatically tested for AIDS, I feel that there is reason to be reluctant about accepting blood transfusion. Jehovah's Witnesses have refused this for many years. Did they look into the future?"—Ugeskrift for Læger (Doctors' Weekly), September 26, 1988.

Really, only time will tell how many blood-borne viruses are lurking in the blood supply. "The unknown may be more cause for concern than the known," writes Dr. Harold T. Meryman. "Transmissible viruses with incubation times measured in many years will be difficult to associate with transfusions and even more difficult to detect. The HTLV group is surely only the first of these to surface." (Transfusion Medicine Reviews, July 1989) "As if the AIDS epidemic were not misery enough, … a number of newly proposed or described risks of transfusion have drawn attention during the 1980's. It does not require great imagination to predict that other serious viral diseases exist and are transmitted by homologous transfusions."—Limiting Homologous Exposure: Alternative Strategies, 1989.

So many "shoes" have already dropped that the Centers for Disease Control recommends "universal precautions." That is, 'health-care workers should assume that all patients are infectious for HIV and other blood-borne pathogens.' With good reason, health-care workers and members of the public are reassessing their view of blood.

We cannot assume that all blood is yet being tested. For example, it is reported that by the start of 1989, about 80 percent of Brazil's blood banks were not under government control, nor were they testing for AIDS."
This entire article is ripped from a Jehovah's Witness site:

Blood Transfusions--How Safe? - Jehovah's Witnesses Official Web Site

Also, copying and pasting entire articles without giving sources is against the forum rules on spam. If you can, please give links or - even better - sum up your argument in your own words rather than copying and pasting someone else's.

(And in case anyone needs it, there is a thorough debunking of the claims made in this article on Rational Wiki: Blood Transfusions: How Safe - RationalWiki )
 

Jenny Collins

Active Member
This entire article is ripped from a Jehovah's Witness site:

Blood Transfusions--How Safe? - Jehovah's Witnesses Official Web Site

Also, copying and pasting entire articles without giving sources is against the forum rules on spam. If you can, please give links or - even better - sum up your argument in your own words rather than copying and pasting someone else's.

(And in case anyone needs it, there is a thorough debunking of the claims made in this article on Rational Wiki: Blood Transfusions: How Safe - RationalWiki )
First of all, you are wrong! There was an article about Cancer online and it was not in our magazine, but it took our article to support that transfusions are bad! I edited out the stuff about Cancer to make this short enough to post!

And further, what difference does it make if it came from our publication? It still quotes reliable sources! And I have included enough that didn't come from us here, further instead of trying to discredit it because we did the article, you could always check out the facts!
 

Jenny Collins

Active Member
This entire article is ripped from a Jehovah's Witness site:

Blood Transfusions--How Safe? - Jehovah's Witnesses Official Web Site

Also, copying and pasting entire articles without giving sources is against the forum rules on spam. If you can, please give links or - even better - sum up your argument in your own words rather than copying and pasting someone else's.

(And in case anyone needs it, there is a thorough debunking of the claims made in this article on Rational Wiki: Blood Transfusions: How Safe - RationalWiki )
I don't know how to provide links, I am not good with computers and you demanded sources from me! Seems if I provide them, you shouldn't be making an issues about rules, and how I post them! I thought you wanted to see them
 

Jenny Collins

Active Member
The death rate from transfusions is 0.0008%. I could just as easily point out the numerous deaths from lightning strikes and use it as an argument to say nobody should ever step foot outside as a result. To contrast your list, here is a website naming alleged fatalities of JW's refusing blood transfusions:

Jehovah's Witnesses - List of deaths of JWs who rejected blood transfusion
First of all, it is impossible to calculate the deaths from transfusions! Simply impossible! But even so, death is not the only harmful effect and also the deaths of JWs is low percent too
 

Jenny Collins

Active Member
Scientists are now studying the effect of transfused blood on the body's defense, or immune, system. What might that mean for you or for a relative who needs surgery?



"Approximately 1 in 100 transfusions are accompanied by fever, chills, or urticarial [hives] Approximately 1 in 6,000 red cell transfusions results in a hemolytic transfusion reaction. This is a severe immunologic reaction that may occur acutely or in a delayed fashion some days after the transfusion; it may result in acute [kidney] failure, shock, intravascular coagulation, and even death."—National Institutes of Health (NIH) conference, 1988.



When doctors transplant a heart, a liver, or another organ, the recipient's immune system may sense the foreign tissue and reject it. Yet, a transfusion is a tissue transplant. Even blood that has been "properly" cross matched can suppress the immune system. At a conference of pathologists, the point was made that hundreds of medical papers "have linked blood transfusions to immunologic responses."—"Case Builds Against Transfusions," Medical World News, December 11, 1989.



A prime task of your immune system is detecting and destroying malignant (cancer) cells. Could suppressed immunity lead to cancer and death? Note two reports.



The journal Cancer (February 15, 1987) gave the results of a study done in the Netherlands: "In the patients with colon cancer, a significant adverse effect of transfusion on long-term survival was seen. In this group there was a cumulative 5-year overall survival of 48% for the transfused and 74% for the no transfused patients." Physicians at the University of Southern California followed up on a hundred patients who underwent cancer surgery. "The recurrence rate for all cancers of the larynx was 14% for those who did not receive blood and 65% for those who did. For cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, and nose or sinus, the recurrence rate was 31% without transfusions and 71% with transfusions."—Annals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology, March 1989.



Danish scientist Niels Jerne shared the 1984 Nobel Prize for Medicine. When asked why he refused a blood transfusion, he said: "A person's blood is like his fingerprints—there are no two types of blood that are exactly alike."



What do such studies suggest regarding transfusions? In his article "Blood Transfusions and Surgery for Cancer," Dr. John S. Spratt concluded: "The cancer surgeon may need to become a bloodless percent developed infections, compared with 4 percent of those who received no transfusions. He reports: "Blood transfusions were associated with infectious complications when given pre-, intra-, or postoperatively … The risk of postoperative infection increased progressively with the number of units of blood given." (The British Journal of Surgery, August 1988) Those attending a 1989 meeting of the American Association of Blood Banks learned this: Whereas 23 percent of those who received donor blood during hip-replacement surgery developed infections, those given no blood had no infections at all.



Dr. John A. Collins wrote concerning this effect of blood transfusions: "It would be ironic indeed if a 'treatment' which has very little evidence of accomplishing anything worthwhile should subsequently be found to intensify one of the main problems faced by such patients."—World Journal of Surgery, February 1987.



DISEASE FREE OR FRAUGHT WITH DANGER?



Blood-borne disease worries conscientious physicians and many patients. Which disease? Frankly, you cannot limit it just to one; there are indeed many.



After discussing the more well-known diseases, Techniques of Blood Transfusion (1982) addresses "other transfusion-associated infectious diseases," such as syphilis, cytomegalovirus infection, and malaria. It then says: "Several other diseases have also been reported to be transmitted by blood transfusion, including herpes virus infections, infectious mononucleosis (Epstein-Barr virus), toxoplasmosis, trypanosomiasis [African sleeping sickness and Chagas' disease], leishmaniasis, brucellosis [undulant fever], typhus, filariasis, measles, salmonellosis, and Colorado tick fever."

surgeon."—The American Journal of Surgery, September 1986.



Another primary task of your immune system is to defend against infection. So it is understandable that some studies show that patients receiving blood are more prone to infection. Dr. P. I. Tartter did a study of colorectal surgery. Of patients given transfusions, 25



Actually, the list of such diseases is growing. You may have read headlines such as "Lyme Disease from a Transfusion? It's Unlikely, but Experts Are Wary." How safe is blood from someone testing positive for Lyme disease? A panel of health officials were asked if they would accept such blood. "All of them answered no, although no one recommended discarding blood from such donors." How should the public feel about banked blood that experts themselves would not accept? —The New York Times, July 18, 1989.

A second reason for concern is that blood collected in one land where a certain disease abounds may be used far away, where neither the public nor the physicians are alert to the danger. With today's increase in travel, including refugees and immigrants, the risk is growing that a strange disease may be in a blood product.

Moreover, a specialist in infectious diseases warned: "The blood supply may have to be screened to prevent transmission of several disorders that were not previously considered infectious, including leukemia, lymphoma, and dementia [or Alzheimer's disease]."—Transfusion Medicine Reviews, January 1989.

Chilling as these risks are, others have created much wider fear.



THE AIDS PANDEMIC


"AIDS has changed forever the way doctors and patients think about blood. And that's not a bad idea, said the doctors gathered at the National Institutes of Health for a conference on blood transfusion."—Washington Post, July 5, 1988.

The AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) pandemic has, with a vengeance, awakened people to the danger of acquiring infectious diseases from blood. Millions are now infected. It is spreading out of control. And its death rate is virtually 100 percent.

AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which can be spread by blood. The modern plague of AIDS came to light in 1981. The very next year, health experts learned that the virus could probably be passed on in blood products. It is now admitted that the blood industry was slow to respond, even after tests were available to identify blood containing HIV antibodies. Testing of donor blood finally began in 1985, but even then it was not applied to blood products that were already on the shelf.

Thereafter the public was assured, 'The blood supply is now safe.' Later, however, it was revealed that there is a dangerous "window period" for AIDS. After a person is infected, it could be months before he produces detectable antibodies. Unaware that he harbors the virus, he might donate blood that would test negative. This has happened. People have developed AIDS after being transfused with such blood!



HIV VIRUS



The picture got even grimmer. The New England Journal of Medicine (June 1, 1989) reported on "Silent HIV Infections." It was established that people can carry the AIDS virus for years without its being detectable by current indirect tests. Some would like to minimize these as rare cases, but they prove "that the risk of AIDS transmission via blood and its components cannot be totally eliminated." (Patient Care, November 30, 1989) The disturbing conclusion: A negative test cannot be read as a clean bill of health. How many will yet get AIDS from blood?



THE NEXT SHOE? OR SHOES?


Many apartment dwellers have heard the thump of one shoe hitting the floor above them; they may then get tense awaiting the second. In the blood dilemma, no one knows how many deadly shoes may still hit.

The AIDS virus was designated HIV, but some experts now call it HIV-1. Why? Because they found another virus of the AIDS type (HIV-2). It can cause AIDS symptoms and is widespread in some areas. Moreover, it "is not consistently detected by the AIDS tests now in use here," reports The New York Times. (June 27, 1989) "The new findings … make it more difficult for blood banks to be sure a donation is safe."

Or what of distant relatives to the AIDS virus? A presidential commission (U.S.A.) said that one such virus "is believed to be the cause of adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma and a severe neurological disease." This virus is already in the blood donor population and can be spread in blood. People have a right to wonder, 'How effective is the blood-bank screening for such other viruses?'

Dr. Knud Lund-Olesen wrote: "Since… some persons in high-risk groups volunteer as donors because they are then automatically tested for AIDS, I feel that there is reason to be reluctant about accepting blood transfusion. Jehovah's Witnesses have refused this for many years. Did they look into the future?"—Ugeskrift for Læger (Doctors' Weekly), September 26, 1988.

Really, only time will tell how many blood-borne viruses are lurking in the blood supply. "The unknown may be more cause for concern than the known," writes Dr. Harold T. Meryman. "Transmissible viruses with incubation times measured in many years will be difficult to associate with transfusions and even more difficult to detect. The HTLV group is surely only the first of these to surface." (Transfusion Medicine Reviews, July 1989) "As if the AIDS epidemic were not misery enough, … a number of newly proposed or described risks of transfusion have drawn attention during the 1980's. It does not require great imagination to predict that other serious viral diseases exist and are transmitted by homologous transfusions."—Limiting Homologous Exposure: Alternative Strategies, 1989.

So many "shoes" have already dropped that the Centers for Disease Control recommends "universal precautions." That is, 'health-care workers should assume that all patients are infectious for HIV and other blood-borne pathogens.' With good reason, health-care workers and members of the public are reassessing their view of blood.

We cannot assume that all blood is yet being tested. For example, it is reported that by the start of 1989, about 80 percent of Brazil's blood banks were not under government control, nor were they testing for AIDS."
you mention statistics for death! During the Red Cross scandal of the 80s, would you have believed the statistics on the low transmission of HIV from blood too? According to Judith Reitman's book, they came to two different calculations of the dangers of HIV transmission, and they selected the one which promoted the lower figure! If this were the 80s and you and I were arguing this subject, would you quote the Red Crosses statistics?
 

Jenny Collins

Active Member
This entire article is ripped from a Jehovah's Witness site:

Blood Transfusions--How Safe? - Jehovah's Witnesses Official Web Site

Also, copying and pasting entire articles without giving sources is against the forum rules on spam. If you can, please give links or - even better - sum up your argument in your own words rather than copying and pasting someone else's.

(And in case anyone needs it, there is a thorough debunking of the claims made in this article on Rational Wiki: Blood Transfusions: How Safe - RationalWiki )[/QUOTE
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"Can cancer be cured?
  • Published on February 2, 2016

  • 0

Milu Ramalho
Parceira de Investidor do Sector Imobiliário!


Can cancer be cured?

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I took this from some Linkd article about Cancer and it included our article in it!
 
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