First, I want to acknowledge the usefulness and general accuracy of your coverage of the extraordinary September 18 change in the Jehovah’s Witness blood policy. This is an enormously important development, and you are right to draw attention to both its present implications and its human history.

I would offer one caution, however. We should be careful about attributing this particular change to external political or legal pressure based on two or three apparently corresponding events. There is certainly a documented history of the Watchtower organization modifying its practices when confronted with serious governmental or legal pressures in places such as Malawi, Mexico, Bulgaria, Norway, and Japan. That history is relevant. But a few instances of temporal correlation are a very small sample, and correlation does not establish causation.

In fact, if one plots the evolution of Watchtower blood policy over roughly the last six and a half decades, the September change was not especially difficult to foresee. The line has been moving progressively—from absolute prohibitions, to acceptance of fractions, to increasingly permissive treatment of procedures involving a patient’s own blood, and now to individual choice concerning red cells, plasma, platelets, and white cells. Sometimes the simplest explanation is to connect those dots.

This latest change also appears to have been under consideration for a considerable period. Physicians, bioethicists, internal critics, and organizations such as AJWRB have been raising these same problems essentially for decades.

There is another important global dimension. Our preliminary work at AJWRB suggests that perhaps 7% of the Jehovah’s Witness population lives in areas where access to component therapy is limited and whole blood may effectively be the only available transfusion option. If that estimate holds up, the continuing prohibition on whole blood is not merely a theological curiosity. It may still have significant clinical consequences.

Who, then, bears responsibility for the historical policy? The answer is more complicated than simply pointing to the present Governing Body. They inherited a doctrine developed under Nathan Knorr and within an organizational and theological culture heavily influenced by figures such as C. J. Woodworth and Fred Franz. At the same time, successive Governing Bodies chose to preserve, defend, refine, and enforce that policy long after its medical and ethical difficulties were well understood.

That distinction matters. Religious organizations are certainly free to revise their theological positions. The more difficult questions concern religious ethics and bioethics: What responsibility exists when people made life-and-death medical decisions under rules subsequently acknowledged to have gone beyond what Scripture actually says? What obligations exist to people who were harmed? And what does genuine informed consent require when religious identity itself has historically been closely connected with acceptance of organizational direction?

These are not new questions. Physicians and AJWRB contributors have been discussing them in medical and bioethics literature for more than three decades, including in the *Journal of Medical Ethics*, the *Western Journal of Medicine*, the *BMJ*, and elsewhere.

The Watchtower had an important opportunity around the turn of the century to reconsider the entire framework. Instead, it retained the prohibition while expanding the permissible use of blood fractions and placing considerable hope in alternatives, including hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers. HBOCs remain scientifically interesting and I sincerely hope that safe, practical oxygen-carrying substitutes eventually become widely available. But after decades of disappointing trials and safety problems, that remains a possibility rather than something on which present-day patients can safely depend.

Your inclusion of the recording involving the woman who lost her mother and the HLC member was especially remarkable. It is painful material, but it is raw, honest, and historically important. These individual experiences form part of a record that AJWRB has worked to preserve for nearly 30 years.

I also think you identified one of the most consequential aspects of Jeffrey Jackson’s September 18 presentation. The Governing Body now expressly acknowledges that the Scriptures do not address the various products derived from blood and says that it is not authorized to “go beyond the things that are written.” Whatever one’s theology, that raises an obvious historical question about why categorical rules concerning those very products were imposed for so many decades.

It is also impossible to know the exact number of deaths attributable to refusal of transfusion. That is an important limitation and should always be acknowledged. AJWRB has previously published epidemiological estimates, and we are preparing a new multi-year analysis focused on severe anemia for submission to a major medical journal.

One of the concepts that emerges from that work is what we call *risk visibility*. Jehovah’s Witnesses are dispersed across more than 100,000 congregations worldwide. Individual congregations may encounter a transfusion-related death only rarely, and individual physicians may treat very few critically anemic Witness patients during an entire career. The events are therefore distributed so widely that neither Witnesses nor clinicians readily perceive the cumulative burden. Our model attempts to account for that problem.

So my principal recommendation is this: continue covering this subject, but temper the rhetoric where the evidence remains incomplete. Avoid sensationalism, distinguish correlation from causation, and allow the documented facts to carry the argument. The history is significant enough that it does not need embellishment.

I would also encourage you and anyone watching this video to make use of the resources at AJWRB.org. We maintain dedicated information portals for medical professionals, current Jehovah’s Witnesses, and former Jehovah’s Witnesses who are concerned about family members facing a medical crisis.

Thank you for the valuable work you are doing in bringing attention to these issues.

Lee Elder  
Executive Director  
AJWRB.org

"You can't eat a salad... but you can eat tomatoes, salad-dressing, lettuce and all the other parts making up a salad in nearly any order" 🙏😭

It's amazing how "new light" always coincides with governmental decisions that could cost Watchtower money.

this makes me sick to my stomach, especially thinking of all the children who’ve died because of their parents beliefs…so so sad

I posted in exJW subreddit that this year marks ten years since my Mom died.

During her lifetime, she had several open heart surgeries because of a heart valve issue, and not a single one did she take a blood transfusion. When she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in 2016, she couldn’t take necessary  chemo treatments because of the blood policy. We could’ve had more time with her instead of just 4 months. 3 months of agonizing about how long we had with her, instead of maybe a longer time span with her.

I spent so much time as a kid and early teen in hospital waiting rooms, I hate this cult, and I can only hope this will make some JWs think deeply

My cousin, who is an Elder, said this is the thing that shook his faith the most. I hope this is enough for him to leave the organization

its so Jehover 😪

My sister was passing away due a Peritonitis, she went on coma during that, so the surgeon put her blood without any authorization, luckily, her husband accepted to sign the documentation after the operation, both got disfellowshipped but she survived.

Edit: they broke a few years ago, the love went off, both are good living good lives apart

"Blood has always been a personal choice"
Translating 🔄
"We have always been at war with Eastasia"

and as a side note, i bet they aren't jumping at the chance to reinstate people who had been disfellowshipped for blood transfusions either. people who decided to take blood after all and lives were destroyed because of it - no apology, no welcome back, no sorry we were wrong. nothing.

Jehovah’s Witnesses love to preach about “the sanctity of life”, all while absolving themselves of the people they have killed. The blood doctrine, the permissiveness towards CSA, domestic abuse, shunning, all of them have cost lives. Your call to action at the end of the video is 100% correct, Watchtower wants these people forgotten.

It’s crazy because years ago, Grey’s Anatomy did an episode on this, and in a way called out the entire religion for this because of how they would just allow their child to straight up die because of religious beliefs. And now look…. Hundreds and thousands of children dead for nothing. FOR LITERALLY NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!

That distinction between whole blood and blood components would be hilarious if it weren't tragic. It's like saying that Jehovah doesn't want you to eat pizza. Oh, but he didn't saw anything about eating the pizza components. You can pick off and eat the olives, mushrooms and pepperoni. Grab a fork or spoon and chow down on the cheese and sauce. Oh, the crust that's left? That's not pizza, that's just the bread part of pizza. Go ahead and enjoy, no point in wasting food. Just don't break Jehovah's heart by eating whole pizza, though.

My mom was an intensive care nurse for children for many years. Whenever she got a JW patient, she'd inform the EMTS/Nurses the parents did not approve of blood transfusion, but they always "forgot" and did the transfusion anyways. They all did this on purpose. She fulfilled her legal obligations, but those nurses and EMTs did not have the same laws to follow. She saved a lot of JW kids this way. She always hated this doctrine and when I told her they changed it, she was thrilled. I was a little taken aback, but thinking about it, shes probably just happy kids dont have to die anymore. And the people in Healthcare don't have to face potential lawsuits for saving peoples lives.

I was born 3 months early, at 1 lb, 6 oz. I was in the hospital for the first 100 days of my life. I had to have 7 or 9 blood transfusions during that time. My parents told me that when I was in the NICU at that time, there was a preemie baby who also needed blood transfusions, and unfortunately, wasn’t able to get them because the parents were Jehovah Witnesses. I’m 21 now, and I’m in college, studying to be a historian. I feel so awful for all the people who lost their lives over this

In Poland we say "jeśli nie wiadomo o co chodzi, to chodzi o pieniądze"
Which translates to something like
"If you don't know what it's about, it's about the money"
I think it fits perfectly with government body

My mom had a friend who died in childhood as the result of the blood policy. My grandfather wouldn’t visit his family in another state because they begged him to donate blood to his sister, who basically raised him. She wasn’t even a JW, and she died because her JW brother wouldn’t help.

I’m quietly thankful that my JW grandparents have passed away by now. I can’t imagine how my grandfather would feel.

I never was a JW, so I can truly only imagine how heavy this weighs on current and ex JWs

One of my hardest hitting criticisms of Watchtower I've aired to my JW sister is that they don't take accountability for the harm they've caused because of their mistakes; they just act like it never happened.

When I worked in the ICU, I saw a terrified teenager die over the course of about 2 weeks because his parents refused to allow him to take RBCs. I used to hear them arguing and him pleading with his parents but as JWs they decided prayer was the better option. The doctors tried getting CPS involved but they had religious exemption so we just had to watch it happen. I’ll never forget the fear in that kid’s eyes

I grew up a Jehovah's Witness and wanted to hear my mom's opinion. Like you, we don't talk about religion, but I still wanted to hear her opinion. My parents retired and moved to Mexico. My mind was blown when she didn't know about the changes. It's been close to 2 weeks, and the brothers in Mexico aren't talking about it, as if they're hiding it.