The Watchtower Society at one time imposed upon its members three rules that often put their health or even their lives in jeopardy: a ban on vaccinations, a ban on organ transplants and a ban on blood transfusions.
     The Society has since withdrawn two of the prohibitions, those against vaccinations and organ transplants. Only the ban on blood transfusions remains. Many claim that the transfusions ban will be cast aside some day, too.
     Older members of the Watchtower Society will remember the ban on vaccinations. Some even may have gone to jail for refusal to receive a vaccination. The Golden Age magazine (predecessor of Awake!), of Feb. 4, 1931, gave "reasons why vaccination is
unscriptural." Of the reasons listed we are told "vaccination is a direct violation of the everlasting covenant that God made with Noah after the flood" (page 293), and the totally unscientific statement that "Vaccination has never saved a human life. It does
not prevent smallpox."
     However, the Society now takes a different view of vaccinations, stating "There can be little doubt that vaccinations appear to have caused a marked decline in the number of people contracting certain contagious diseases. During the first thirty years of this century there were thousands of smallpox cases in the United States. >From 1920 to 1930 alone, they ran 30,000 to 100,000 annually, but in recent years there have been only about 55 cases of smallpox annually, with no deaths." Today Witnesses are encouraged to receive vaccinations, according to the Aug. 22, 1965, Awake! magazine.
     A more recent change in Watchtower policy is its reversal on the ban on organ transplants. Witnesses once were told that organ transplants were "cannibalism, a practice abhorrent to all civilized people." Further, "Jehovah God did not grant permission for humans to try to perpetuate their lives by cannibalistically taking into their bodies human flesh, whether chewed or in the form of whole organs or body parts taken from others." (The Watchtower, Nov. 15, 1967, pp. 702-703)
     The Watchtower, in 1980, carefully sidestepped its former position when it said: "Some Christians might feel that taking into their bodies any tissue or body part from another human is cannibalistic." It went on to say: "Other sincere Christians today may feel that the Bible does not definitely rule out medical transplants of human organs...It may be argued, too, that organ transplants are different from cannibalism since the 'donor' is not killed to supply food...While the Bible specifically forbids consuming blood, there is no Biblical command pointedly forbidding the taking in of other human tissue. For this reason, each individual faced with making a decision on this matter should carefully and prayerfully weigh matters and then decide conscientiously what he or she could or could not do before God. It is a matter for personal decision." (The Watchtower, March 15, 1980, pg. 31)
     The teaching on blood transfusions is the most devastating of the three Watchtower bans. By way of comparison, the world was shocked at the more than 900 deaths in the name of "religion" in Guyana under the Rev. Jim Jones. However, little is said about the countless lives lost because of the Watchtower's ban on blood.  If they were all counted up, I am sure that more have died due to the Watchtower's doctrine on blood than the number who died in Jonestown, Guyana.
     Is the Watchtower's prohibition on blood transfusions scriptural? Is violation of "the eating of blood" scripturally punishable by death? Leviticus 17:13-14 says that anyone who eats the blood of any flesh is to be "cut off." Being "cut off," according to the Watchtower, means being put to death. However, this is only their interpretation of the term, for the context of the passage clearly shows that the violator 1) becomes outlawed from his people, 2) must wash himself, 3) must wash his clothing, and 4) will be unclean until evening but then he will be clean. (Leviticus 17:15-16)
     Leviticus 17:15-16 shows clearly that violating God's law on blood is punishable by being outlawed from one's people for a short period of time. However, if one examines Exodus 31:15 (also Numbers 15:32) one finds the punishment for picking up sticks (working) on the Sabbath was death. Thus the Bible emphatically shows the sin of picking up sticks on the Sabbath was more serious than that of the drinking (or eating) of blood. Luke 6:9 asks, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good, or to harm, to save a life, or to destroy it?" Jesus stresses that the law of life is far superior to the law of the Sabbath. And since the law of the Sabbath is far above that of the eating of blood, it leaves little doubt as to its relationship to the law of life.
     There is no law in God's Word that forbids blood transfusions. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 4:15, "But where there is no law, neither is there violation."
     One can only pray that the Watchtower leaders will truly open themselves to the light of God's Word and, as in the case of reversed decisions on vaccinations and organ transplants, seek to save a life rather than to destroy it.

By  Roger Griffith

Editorian Comment:  A Jehovah's Witness that violated any of the above health law was disfellowshiped, put out of the organization.

Published by
Berean Christian Ministries
P.O. Box 1091
Webster, NY 14580

E-mail:   bcmmin@frontiernet.net
Web pages:
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jw/bloodtra
5-29-98