TrueTomHarley

Ha..your older than me…

Nominally, he was. I didn’t get the impression his heart was in it. The mom certainly was and I was there as much to support her as her son. Sometimes people just like an ally, regardless of how things go down.

Adding to Thinkings list, of which each item is different, so that I think that would have answered your question, is just plain ‘ol human error. Anyone who has ever worked in healthcare (my wife is a retired nurse) knows there is plenty of it. 
In my area, hospitals laid off nurses who would not accepted the Covid shot. This led to collapse of the hospital system, as there were a lot of them, not easily or affordably replaced, so largely not replaced, making the remaining staff take up the slack over which they protested and went on strike. Do you think this worked to increase the safety of transfusion protocol?
Just recently local hospitals were found to be in severe violation of a law that they must not be understaffed. It’s a LAW—how could that have not fixed the problem? It’s as though administrators say, ‘If our nurses quit, the very stones will take care of you!’
Everything is collapsing. And whereas JW’s stand on war, tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, and compliance with safety laws, place them BY FAR among the safest religions out there, you keep flailing a on a number so relatively tiny that neither Thinking nor myself can think of an example we personally know of. And neither of us are youngsters, especially Thinking.
In a revolving population of several million you are going to find countless examples of anything. But there is such a thing as focusing on the trees so minutely as to not see the forest.

Adding to Thinkings list, of which each item is different, so that I think that would have answered your question, is just plain ‘ol human error. Anyone who has ever worked in healthcare (my wife is a retired nurse) knows there is plenty of it. 
In my area, hospitals laid off nurses who would not accepted the Covid shot. This led to collapse of the hospital system, as there were a lot of them, not easily or affordably replaced, so largely not replaced, making the remaining staff take up the slack over which they protested and went on strike. Do you think this worked to increase the safety of transfusion protocol?
Just recently local hospitals were found to be in severe violation of a law that they must not be understaffed. It’s a LAW—how could that have not fixed the problem? It’s as though administrators say, ‘If our nurses quit, the very stones will take care of you!’
Everything is collapsing. And whereas JW’s stand on war, tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, and compliance with safety laws, place them BY FAR among the safest religions out there, you keep flailing a on a number so relatively tiny that neither Thinking nor myself can think of an example we personally know of. And neither of us are youngsters, especially Thinking.
In a revolving population of several million you are going to find countless examples of anything. But there is such a thing as focusing on the trees so minutely as to not see the forest.

Next, I will ask the Librarian how she feels about algebra. (that old hen)

How do you feel about tacos?

I have never heard this before? Where did you?
”Where did this pooch get his wisdom? Is this not Pudgy, who we used to walk every day?”

I prefer enchiladas.

Maybe. Maybe not. The Jews of the Hebrew Bible did not necessarily consider Jehovah to be an invisible Spirit the way we do. They considered Jehovah to have a body that could see and hear and EAT and SMELL. (FWIW, ancient Jewish rabbis had no trouble agreeing that Jehovah was circumcised!!!) The idea that smoke from "incinerated" meat created a kind of smoky incense that ascended upwards toward heaven was likely an indication of this consumption by God, leaving only a few ashes. And this idea was spelled out even more clearly in other nearby cultures.
When the Jews would be scattered, they would have to serve gods that were not real and therefore could NOT eat and smell.
(Deuteronomy 4:27, 28) 27 Jehovah will scatter you among the peoples, and just a few of you will survive among the nations to which Jehovah will have driven you. 28 There you will have to serve gods of wood and stone made by human hands, gods that cannot see or hear or eat or smell.
(Leviticus 26:31) . . .I will give your cities to the sword and make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell the pleasing aromas of your sacrifices.
 
I agree that the intent of Leviticus 3 and similar passages was probably to identify ALL the major fatty places for sacrificed animals. It can also be read as: "Don't eat any of the fat, sacrifice all of it, and this INCLUDES the fatty pieces of the inner organs and intestines." That's why I quoted the passage about animala that died naturally or were killed by another animal. In that case, it was NOT about a sacrifice or a priest's portion. 

That’s why Cain was terrified of being banished …. outside the Garden the whole world was filled with proto-people that were not direct creations from God … “the land of exiles”, where life was hard and dangerous, and NO ONE lived forever.
They would naturally want to kill Cain on sight, because his family would have lived forever in a protected Paradise …. and they did not.
A modern day example is “everybody” hates and wants to kill the Jews because they suspect they might REALLY be God’s chosen people, and suspect that they, themselves,  are not.
Grrrrrrrr ….
 

Nominally, he was. I didn’t get the impression his heart was in it. The mom certainly was and I was there as much to support her as her son. Sometimes people just like an ally, regardless of how things go down.

First she gets perceived condescension from MM, and now you are going to give her a superiority complex.

Nominally, he was. I didn’t get the impression his heart was in it. The mom certainly was and I was there as much to support her as her son. Sometimes people just like an ally, regardless of how things go down.

Adding to Thinkings list, of which each item is different, so that I think that would have answered your question, is just plain ‘ol human error. Anyone who has ever worked in healthcare (my wife is a retired nurse) knows there is plenty of it. 
In my area, hospitals laid off nurses who would not accepted the Covid shot. This led to collapse of the hospital system, as there were a lot of them, not easily or affordably replaced, so largely not replaced, making the remaining staff take up the slack over which they protested and went on strike. Do you think this worked to increase the safety of transfusion protocol?
Just recently local hospitals were found to be in severe violation of a law that they must not be understaffed. It’s a LAW—how could that have not fixed the problem? It’s as though administrators say, ‘If our nurses quit, the very stones will take care of you!’
Everything is collapsing. And whereas JW’s stand on war, tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, and compliance with safety laws, place them BY FAR among the safest religions out there, you keep flailing a on a number so relatively tiny that neither Thinking nor myself can think of an example we personally know of. And neither of us are youngsters, especially Thinking.
In a revolving population of several million you are going to find countless examples of anything. But there is such a thing as focusing on the trees so minutely as to not see the forest.

Oh, it is hardly proof positive, but both have been around for a long, long time. Both respond to me in more or less the same way. Both are avante garde about respecting the GB’s wishes—MM has made it clear, and the Librarian just for hosting such a site. Both have a fixation on order—concerned when a thread wanders. Both respond to challenges with snippets about food—‘I like tacos’ for the Librarian, ‘pass the popcorn’ for MM
I mean, I wouldn’t stake significant sums on it, but no way is it an absurd speculation.

Adding to Thinkings list, of which each item is different, so that I think that would have answered your question, is just plain ‘ol human error. Anyone who has ever worked in healthcare (my wife is a retired nurse) knows there is plenty of it. 
In my area, hospitals laid off nurses who would not accepted the Covid shot. This led to collapse of the hospital system, as there were a lot of them, not easily or affordably replaced, so largely not replaced, making the remaining staff take up the slack over which they protested and went on strike. Do you think this worked to increase the safety of transfusion protocol?
Just recently local hospitals were found to be in severe violation of a law that they must not be understaffed. It’s a LAW—how could that have not fixed the problem? It’s as though administrators say, ‘If our nurses quit, the very stones will take care of you!’
Everything is collapsing. And whereas JW’s stand on war, tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, and compliance with safety laws, place them BY FAR among the safest religions out there, you keep flailing a on a number so relatively tiny that neither Thinking nor myself can think of an example we personally know of. And neither of us are youngsters, especially Thinking.
In a revolving population of several million you are going to find countless examples of anything. But there is such a thing as focusing on the trees so minutely as to not see the forest.

Miles himself raised that objection. But I told him to suck it up. He’d already gotten his licks in. Time to move on. I knew Pudgy would back me and the card-catalog Librarian would be too tipsy to notice.

When Jehovah’s organization was confronted with Covid and the vaccine campaign, and all the controversy generated, they tracked those whom they found easiest to track—those among their worldwide circle of full time servants. This informal survey indicated to them that any risk of vaccinate was quite low, acceptable in view of the risk of Covid which seemed quite high. Soon we began hearing of how most of those at Bethel had gotten vaccinated. 
Since then I have read, from the worldwide population, how ‘died suddenly’ is now a thing. Did they always?  A book by that name charts insurance company data to discover a significant, statistically most unlikely, spike in sudden unexplained deaths in otherwise healthy people, often the young, which coincides exactly with the time period in which vaccines began to be mandated for those employed in large companies.
There is no doubt that the worldwide statistical pattern shows this. Yet I look around the congregations and circuit and if it shows up, it is not so marked as to be noticeable to me.
It is probably similar with blood transfusions. You asked my personal experience. I gave it. I don’t know the overall pattern. I accept when you and others say some have died that you are not lying. As with Thinking, however, there does appear to be a lot of “fearmongering” (her word) to make the situation appear worse than it is.

Miles himself raised that objection. But I told him to suck it up. He’d already gotten his licks in. Time to move on. I knew Pudgy would back me and the card-catalog Librarian would be too tipsy to notice.

When Jehovah’s organization was confronted with Covid and the vaccine campaign, and all the controversy generated, they tracked those whom they found easiest to track—those among their worldwide circle of full time servants. This informal survey indicated to them that any risk of vaccinate was quite low, acceptable in view of the risk of Covid which seemed quite high. Soon we began hearing of how most of those at Bethel had gotten vaccinated. 
Since then I have read, from the worldwide population, how ‘died suddenly’ is now a thing. Did they always?  A book by that name charts insurance company data to discover a significant, statistically most unlikely, spike in sudden unexplained deaths in otherwise healthy people, often the young, which coincides exactly with the time period in which vaccines began to be mandated for those employed in large companies.
There is no doubt that the worldwide statistical pattern shows this. Yet I look around the congregations and circuit and if it shows up, it is not so marked as to be noticeable to me.
It is probably similar with blood transfusions. You asked my personal experience. I gave it. I don’t know the overall pattern. I accept when you and others say some have died that you are not lying. As with Thinking, however, there does appear to be a lot of “fearmongering” (her word) to make the situation appear worse than it is.

Miles himself raised that objection. But I told him to suck it up. He’d already gotten his licks in. Time to move on. I knew Pudgy would back me and the card-catalog Librarian would be too tipsy to notice.

Some expected me to. I caught some flak next morning from one of the boy’s hometown elders. I didn’t answer then as I would today—that they should have been there themselves if they were concerned about his outcome. I just knew at the time with this unknown teen that if he hadn’t formed a stand by now it was a little late to start just then, or for me to encourage that.
Then, of course, adding to my prior answer to Many Miles, there was the time I was admitted myself for a sudden onset of pain and they advised surgery come Monday morning. I made clear at least twice how I felt about blood and was told, ‘Not a problem, easily accommodated, we do it all the time. Just sign here and here.’ Then, on the operating table, in comes the anesthesiologist who says, ‘I see you’re a Witness. If it should turn out that you need a transfusion, will you accept one? Or would you rather die?’
The experience is in ‘Tom Irregardless and Me,’ where it was attributed to Wayne Whitepebble. But it was really me.

I have known three people in my lifetime who were told, point blank, and without much empathy, that they would die without a blood transfusion. None agreed to one. None died. One of them was a teen backed by her parents. 
I realize that some persons have died, as you’ve indicated. I have just never personally known of one.
I also recall being asked to visit a teen from some rural congregation who had been in an accident and was being advised a transfusion was necessary. His mom was a Witness, his dad was not. I went with the idea that if this lad, who I did not know, wished for no transfusion, I would back him in his wish.  He did not indicate any such desire and he was transfused. I do not know what became of him afterwards. The experience was awkward and uncomfortable for me, not knowing any of the people involved. 
The closest experience with blood that I know, not exactly what you have asked,  is of a nearby couple whose son had a defective heart from birth. The local hospitals would not agree to operate without blood. His parents took him to a hospital out of state that specialized in bloodless medicine, where the heart was repaired without incident. Several years later the problem (or a new one) returned. This time, neither the local hospital nor the bloodless one held out much hope. Parents took him to the hospital that had operated the first time, and he died. Sorry, I don’t have the specifics of exactly what his defect was.
The husband was not a believer when these trials began. He acquiesced to his wife’s stance. The support he received from the friends at the faraway hospital made such an impression upon him that he later became a Witness, and was one at the time of the child’s second operation. He has remained steadfast in the faith and serves as an elder today.
Another elder who I don’t know well—his youngest suffered some malady and hospitals wanted transfusions. They held firm and the boy is well today, with what treatment I forget, but the man recalled to me his anguish at the time that his son might die “to no purpose.”

Sometimes, when you read something, or somebody tells you something, it makes perfect sense. Other times you get the uneasy feeling it’s somewhere somehow you were being observed through binoculars by a duck.
…. there is an actual Latin word for this, but it escapes me at the moment.
You probably remember the scripture that says, paraphrased, “… you must not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk .…”.  The instant I read this scripture, many years ago, I understood why God would command such a thing, and I wholeheartedly agreed with it at the same level of seriousness that I instantly understood that it was intended.
Occasionally over the past 50 years, in discussing other subjects, I would mention that commandment, and was genuinely stunned that others did not also instantly “get it”. It made no sense to them. If you are going to KILL an animal for food … what’s the big deal how you cook it?
The younger animal is food. The mother’s milk is food. What’s the big deal? Neither one knows or is capable of comprehending WHAT is done with their being a resource.
Just as soldiers become soldiers for dozens of different reasons, even among soldiers, sometimes what is a moral necessity for one is incomprehensible for another.
The SYMBOLIC (  … if you will, the SPIRITUAL …) value of blood is unique, because by example and by edict from God, it is a common theme that runs throughout the whole Bible. It’s clear that we have permission to use as food anything that walks, crawls, swims or flies, including (if you can overcome the strong CULTURAL taboos, like when Jerusalem was under siege) people … presumably bled out from war wounds. Some people would rather starve to death …. and have.
The prohibition against blood is consistent in principle throughout the entire Bible, but what convinced me was the example of King David, a soldier who slaughtered men and animals by the thousands … himself … personally … in hand to hand and eyeball to eyeball combat. When he in laying siege to a city remarked he was thirsty, and the only close by water was in a well near the city walls, two of his men risked their lives in a hail of arrows, spears, and rocks to bring him back a bucket of water. 
David did NOT drink the water. He poured it out on the ground, not because it was blood, or even blood fractions, but because it REPRESENTED the lives of his two soldiers, the EXACT same way that blood represents all air-breathing (pneuma=air) souls. 
In 1960, when I first read that, I instantly “got it”, the same way I instantly understood about the “boiling a kid in it’s mothers milk”.
That’s why, for me, it is just as much respect for the IDEA, or SYMBOLISM of respecting that which Jehovah God has clearly stated is his jealously guarded personal property, as well as actual blood.
Some people “get it”.
Some people don’t.

It is too easy to take the JW blood transfusion stand as an arbitrary concoction of their ‘top brass,’ imposed on everyone else for—who knows what reason? In this crazy world of ‘anticult activism,’ it can be spun as a technique of ‘controlling people:’ Lay a few conditions on others and there is no question as to who is boss.
That is why I like this quote from Professor of Anatomy at the University of Copenhagen, Thomas Bartholin. (1616-1680) Yes, it was a long time ago. Does that make it irrelevant? If anything, it makes it key. 
“Those who drag in the use of human blood for internal remedies of diseases appear to misuse it and to sin gravely . . . Cannibals are condemned. Why do we not abhor those who stain their gullet with human blood? Similar is the receiving of alien blood from a cut vein, either through the mouth or by instruments of transfusion. The authors of this operation are held in terror by the divine law, by which the eating of blood is prohibited,” he writes.
It is key because it shows the stand educated people took, at least some of them, before the occasional price that has been paid caused ‘the faithful’ to go all weak in the knees. Did Jehovah’s Witnesses make this stuff up about blood transfusions just to be ornery? No. Their stance was once the stance that immediately occurred to God-fearing persons such as this professor. I’d take him over that smart-ass GC philosophy professor any day.
The smart-ass philosophy professor—no question about it—leans heavily toward atheism, if not embracing it entirely. He consistently insists that ‘rationality’ must define all. He consistently insists that belief in God is ‘irrational.’ You can do it if you want—he gives his permission—but just don’t imagine you’re being ‘rational.’ To be sure, there are philosophies that would prohibit you, but they are as logically inconsistent as the ones that allow you, so he doesn’t know what to do until he has rationally settled the problem, a project that isn’t going too well, though that doesn’t phase him.
It makes a difference if you are atheist or not. Leaning toward atheism means that any loss of life is permanent and therefore must be averted at all costs. Exceptions are made for loss of life due to war, due to scientific or other exploration, even for extreme sports. For the latter, the deceased is likely, not to be derided as the idiot everyone else thinks he is, but to be lauded for having ‘lived life to the full,’ ‘following his dreams’ and so forth.  But if that dream has to do with religion—then and only then is such loss of life deemed near-criminal.
To be sure, atheists are not glib about loss of life. They endorse efforts to make war safer, for instance, by sending in drones to do the bombing, rather than soldiers who might get hurt. They make us all wear seatbelts when we drive. No spouse has ever nagged so much as my car nags me if I ride unbuckled—the alarm starts pleasantly enough but soon escalates to nuclear war alarm level that is well-nigh unbearable. Protective equipment, even concussion protocol, is devised for football athletes—no, not that silly game where you kick the ball around but can’t touch it with your hands, but the one where you can manhandle it and anyone with it pretty much anywhichway you like—violence comparable to rugby, I am told. They’ve made it safer. They even stopped the game when the Bills players dropped on the field and the ambulance came out to administer CPR before taking him away. It took about an hour, during which teammates crowded around so fans could not see the fellow being worked on, an hour during which the sports broadcasters had to uncomfortably tread water, but they did afterward call off the game and all the fans went home. They didn’t do as in Ancient Rome: ‘Another one bit the dust! Bring out the next combatant!’
Jehovah’s Witnesses have also made their Bible-based transfusion stand ‘safer’—not directly they haven’t, but by spurring on the advent of bloodless medicine, they have made holding fast far ‘safer’ than it used to be. From Tom Irregardless and Me: 
“The Watchtower organization never meant to kill a god; Witnesses just wanted him to leave them alone. We initially assumed when doctors told us we were crazy for refusing blood transfusions that we were, at least insofar as the present life is concerned. But each passing year has revealed our position to be more sound medically, and the transfusion god’s less. We never imagined doctors would ultimately expose transfusion as a sham and kill the god. It wasn’t our intention for that to happen. We don’t gloat about it. 
“To be sure, it hasn’t happened. The god of blood transfusion is not dead. He’s alive. But he’s not well. He’s limping where he once walked tall. He is like the god of churches that Sam Harris boasts he has killed. He’s respected so long as he stays in his place. But his place used to be anywhere he wanted it to be. He’ll be around for a long time because too many incomes depend upon him. But he’s not the god he once was.”
So the Witness transfusion policy on transfusion, like the above policies on other secular matters, is much safer than it once was. It is certainly far ‘safer’ than it was in Bartholin’s day, back when a godly person would instantly recognize that to misuse blood was to “sin gravely” and be “held in terror by the divine law.”
To the extent that this is true (I’m pretty sure it is, but I just don’t want to rubber-stamp it), it has not become a situation in which the prevailing view of transfusion has changed. It has become a situation in which HQ says it is not for them to enforce one’s compliance or non-compliance. They are moving more into the arena of ‘each one must carry his own load’ as opposed to ‘You’d better carry it; we’re watching you.’ It would be in perfect harmony with the revised stand ‘over counting time.’ It might be okay for the enforcer to verify that you count time, but not the shepherd. 
To the extent it is true, if someone caves on the blood issue due to cowardice, like Peter caved in denying his Lord and then later in the matter of partiality, it is between them and Jehovah. If someone ‘caves’ on this issue due to conviction, it is also between them and Jehovah. The shepherding organization may well assist, healing in the instance of cowardice, educating in the case of possibly misplaced conviction, but will otherwise stand aside and not meddle in the affairs of the ‘house slave’ of another. It is a win-win. Being a win-win, to continue to rail over transfusion beliefs begins to smack of ‘fighting against God.’ There they are, plain as day, according to Bartholin. The support organization has fixed the issue. What more could you ask for, other than usurping the power to resurrect? You’ll just have to wait on that for a while.