Members may now make conscience-based decisions on accepting or donating four major blood components
LAGOS — Jehovah’s Witnesses have announced an adjustment to their policy on blood transfusions, allowing individual members to decide, based on personal conscience, whether to accept or donate the four main components of blood.
The change was announced by the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses in a statement issued by the organisation’s World Headquarters in Warwick, New York, and published on its official website on Friday.
Under the revised position, the organisation said individual Witnesses may make their own decisions concerning red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma and platelets.
According to the statement, the decision to accept these blood components from another person is now considered a matter of personal conscience.
The organisation also said members must individually decide whether to donate blood for the specific purpose of providing components or fractions for another person.
However, Jehovah’s Witnesses stressed that the change does not represent a reversal of their longstanding religious position against whole-blood transfusions.
The organisation said its refusal of whole-blood transfusions remains a core religious teaching based on the biblical instruction to “abstain from blood” in Acts 15:20.
Paul Gillies, international spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses at the organisation’s World Headquarters, said the group continues to regard blood as sacred.
Gillies said medical decisions involving blood components were matters of conscience between individual Witnesses and their God, Jehovah.
He explained that the organisation’s latest adjustment followed earlier clarifications concerning blood fractions and the use of an individual’s own blood during medical procedures.
The organisation said the Bible does not specifically address decisions concerning the four main blood components, and that the same reasoning that previously applied to certain blood fractions had now been extended to red cells, white cells, plasma and platelets.
Jehovah’s Witnesses also said the organisation’s position does not prevent its members from seeking professional medical treatment.
The group stated that its members value life and seek the best available medical care while maintaining their religious convictions.
It also clarified that Jehovah’s Witnesses do not practise faith healing and seek qualified doctors capable of providing effective medical treatment consistent with their wishes, values and beliefs.
According to Gillies, local congregations will not interfere in individual decisions involving blood components where the organisation considers the matter to be one of personal conscience.
He said fellow believers would continue to respect and support one another’s personal decisions.
The latest policy adjustment follows a clarification issued by Jehovah’s Witnesses in March concerning the use of a member’s own blood during surgery and other medical procedures.
That earlier clarification allowed individual Witnesses to decide whether their own blood could be removed, stored and subsequently returned to them during medical treatment.
The organisation, however, maintained its position against receiving blood from another person under its existing whole-blood teaching.
Jehovah’s Witnesses said the organisation has more than nine million members worldwide, with congregations across more than 200 countries and territories.
The latest development represents a further clarification of the religious organisation’s position on medical treatment involving blood, while leaving its longstanding prohibition on whole-blood transfusions unchanged.
IBN News reports that Jehovah’s Witnesses have now placed decisions concerning the acceptance or donation of red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma and platelets within the area of individual conscience, while the organisation’s religious position against whole-blood transfusions remains unchanged.
