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“Your Word Is Truth”

“Keep Abstaining from . . . Blood”

“BLOOD transfusions now kill at least 3,500 Americans and medically injure another 50,000 each year.” So says Dr. J. G. Allen of Stanford University, considered by many researchers as one of the foremost authorities on the blood problem in the United States. However, because of poor reporting habits on the part of many physicians the real rate, according to the Center for Disease Controls, could be as high as 35,000 deaths and 500,000 illnesses each year due to blood transfusions.​—The National Observer, January 29, 1972.

Included in those statistics, let it be noted, are none of the Christian witnesses of Jehovah. Why not? Not merely because they are unwilling to risk the dangers of blood transfusions but primarily because they do not want to incur God’s displeasure. God is displeased with blood transfusions. ‘Where does the Bible forbid blood transfusions?’ do you ask?

Since there were no blood transfusions when the Bible was written, we should not expect the Bible to mention them in so many words. But God in his Word does plainly forbid the use of blood of another creature to sustain one’s own life, and this he did on three specific occasions. Therefore the use of blood for transfusions comes under that prohibition.

Thus after the flood Jehovah God told Noah and his sons that “every moving animal that is alive may serve as food for you.” With that permission went two prohibitions: “Only flesh with its soul​—its blood—​you must not eat,” and, “Anyone shedding man’s blood, by man will his own blood be shed.” Neither of these two bans was ever rescinded.​—Gen. 9:3-6.

Some eight centuries later God again forbade the eating of blood, and that in the strongest of terms, because the penalty for eating “any sort of blood” was death. Blood was to be used only “to make atonement for your souls” upon the altar.​—Lev. 17:10-14.

While Christians are not under the Mosaic law, they nevertheless are not free to eat blood. Why not? First of all because the prohibition on eating blood, given to Noah and his sons long before the time of Moses, still applies to all mankind, as already noted. And secondly, the Christian Greek Scriptures specifically show that that prohibition still applies to Christians. Thus the Christian council that met at Jerusalem to consider circumcision and related questions sent out instructions to the effect that Christians were “to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication.”​—Acts 15:20, 29.

More and more medical authorities are warning against widespread use of blood transfusions. In fact, it may be only a matter of time, and not a long time either, before the medical profession will discard blood transfusions as a passing fad, even as years ago they dropped bloodletting. Typical of this trend is what Swedish and German authorities on blood transfusions told a symposium of twenty-five Norwegian professors of medicine and medical directors regarding the superiority of plasma expanders over whole blood:

“It is no overstatement that there is today a waste of blood at hospitals all over the world. . . . It is today possible with a neutral preparation to expand the volume of blood plasma​—the fluid which carries the corpuscles throughout the body. . . . Every individual has his own ‘saturation point’ in the relation between the amount of red blood cells and the intake of oxygen. If the amount of blood cells gets too high, there is a decrease of the intake of oxygen because the blood is too viscous [too thick].” Because of this “a patient in many cases would be better off with less blood cells, consequently, only the lost plasma is substituted. Most important in this connection is the fact that the risk of blood clots thereby is reduced. A number of examinations have proved dextran to have this effect. To prevent blood clots we can almost say as a rule the first bottle used at a transfusion should be dextran.”

Noting other benefits from using dextran rather than blood, these authorities went on to say: “Certain serious diseases may be transmitted via blood. There have been so many such cases recently that one at least should not take unnecessary risks. Moreover, a blood transfusion is to be regarded as any other transplantation, for example, of kidney or other tissue. ‘Foreign’ blood also alarms the body’s antibodies, although the consequences may not be as obvious as when a kidney is rejected.”​—Dagbladet, April 22, 1971.

Yes, blood is a tissue, just as the heart and the kidneys are tissue. Because it is a “liquid tissue” this fact is not generally appreciated. Immunological forces, placed in the body by the Creator to protect it, oppose any foreign tissue and raise up antibodies to fight against it. That is why the popularity of heart transplants was so short-lived.

Life magazine, September 17, 1971, showed a picture on the front cover of six persons who had received heart transplants and who seemed to be well and happy at the time. But within just eight months after the picture was taken all six of these had succumbed to their body’s efforts to reject foreign tissue. The article told how “the rejection drugs triggered bizarre acts,” and that “their ballooning faces haunted one doctor.” The author of the article, who has written a book on the subject, Hearts, also reported that the death rate for heart transplants for the first three years was more than 85 percent. One surgeon, who transplanted twenty-two hearts, had every last one of his patients die. And while he dismissed the entire matter as “a procedure which we tried and​—for the time being—​discarded,” the patients were not able to be so casual about it. And here again, it might be noted, that the stand of the Christian witnesses of Jehovah​—that such transplants are in effect a form of cannibalism—​proved a safeguard. How so? In that it spared them much frustration, grief and anxiety, which were experienced not only by the patients and their relatives but even by many of the assisting medical personnel.

‘If blood transfusions also violate the immunological principle, then why do they not prove as lethal as do heart transplants?’ you may ask. The reason is that blood is a temporary tissue. A temporary tissue? Yes, for in every second of time millions of red blood cells die and are replaced. So any ‘foreign’ transfused blood cells do not remain for long in the body.

Surely the Bible unequivocally testifies that God’s servants must “keep abstaining from . . . blood.” Those who heed that command not only have the satisfaction that they are obeying God, but may well save themselves much grief because of the risks involved in blood transfusions.