From:  (Les Brown)
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Truth Jehovah Witness.
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 11:44:53 GMT

" Truth.." <> wrote in aus.religion.christian:

>A blood transfusion is said by some not eating blood but if a person is not
>able to eat physical food how do they feed him? Intravenously.
>
I've come upon this late due to Passover and the recent death of my
late mother, may she rest in peace, so I apologise to those who have
attempted correspondence with me and have not received a reply. But
this topic I feel I must reply to because of the severity of the
problem.

If we accept what the Bible says about the life being in the blood at
accept at face value and how important blood this is to the JW's then
that leaves three other points that bother me deeply. 

1/ When the Bible refers to eating it refers to through the mouth;
chewing, digesting, the full process right through the digestive
tract. Jews say a blessing before eating to express their gratitude to
the Al-mighty for having provided them with food and given them the
ENJOYMENT of eating. Yes, there is pleasure in eating food and G-d is
to be blessed for that. There is no blessing said over medicine or
food not permitted to be eaten (in the case of the Jew this means
non-kosher food such as pig, crayfish or snails). Since we Jews wrote
the Bible, we know what it means. 

Blood transfusions could not be considered as having been eaten,
primarily because it does not enter the digestive tract. The fact that
bodily nourishment may enter the blood stream the same way, could in
no way be considered eating as the digestive process is bypassed, and,
in the case of blood, it could hardly be regarded as enjoyment. Blood
is probably better regarded as a medicine in this case as it has no
role to play other than controlling/removing illness or directly
sustaining life; like a drug or an injection for, say, influenza.

2/ If blood is not to be eaten then can we assume that all JW's are
strict vegans? It is impossible to remove blood 100% from flesh. Even
we Jews do not do that. Merely removing blood by salting or grilling
the meat is acceptable to us. Letting it drain from the flesh is not;
I mean, let's be practicle here as Jewish law require us to be. The
sacrifices eaten by the priests in the days of the Temple must have
had some blood or the remains of blood in the food but it was, of
course, permitted to them. The only way you can strictly avoid eating
blood is to not eat meat, and even then you may have problems as some
food colouring use the blood of certain insects. Even fertilisers for
growing vegetables could not be used by JW's

3/ (And this one to me is the essential problem)  If we place the
importance of blood over and above sustaining life itself, then what
are we saying about life? For to allow a person to die because of a
lack of blood, then life must be the secondary to blood. Rather than
celebrating birth and death we should be mourning over every bleeding
cut and shedding tears everytime we defecate. Birth and death are
penultimate, blood is supreme. According to your Christian faith, when
a person sins, is it his life that is required of him or his blood?
For heaven's sake blood is for life, not life is for blood. 

Les Brown

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