Shaky Pillar #6
Confusion about Blood
“Jehovah’s Witnesses are well known for taking these Bible commands to heart. They reject all transfusions involving whole blood or the four primary blood components—red cells, plasma, white cells, and platelets” (The Real Value of Blood, Awake!—2006, page 10, http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102006283).
They would rather die than receive a blood transfusion.
At the beginning of creation, man was given a vegetarian diet (Genesis 2:16-17), but when Noah and his family emerged from the ark following the flood, God expanded the menu to include meat, telling them, “Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you. As the green herb have I given you all. But flesh with the life thereof, (which is) the blood thereof, shall ye not eat” (Genesis 9:3-4). Meat qualified as food, but blood did not. This rule was renewed when the Law of Moses went into effect with all its dietary restrictions: “Ye shall eat neither fat nor blood” (Leviticus 3:17). And, it remains true under the present Covenant in Christ (Acts 15:19-20, 28-29; 21:25).
God has never permitted man to eat blood, yet a transfusion is not eating. Food goes in the mouth, down the throat, into the stomach, and through the intestines; it never goes in the veins! To consider a blood transfusion to be eating is to totally misunderstand some very basic functions of the body.
Moreover, the Watchtower also confuses the purpose of abstaining from blood. “Whatsoever man there be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, who taketh in hunting any beast or bird that may be eaten; he shall pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with dust. For as to the life of all flesh, the blood thereof is (all one) with the life thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh; for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off” (Leviticus 17:13-14). It is specifically with respect to life that the Lord ever forbade eating blood. To let a person die whose life could be saved by a transfusion is not at all respectful of life.
