Are JWs allowed to get Platelet-rich plasma?

[Guest Nicole]

9 hours ago, Gone Away said:

Primary blood component?

Yes... I've heard that reasoning about plaquetas or trombocitos, that of if "it is not the whole blood is ok"

[Anna]

9 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

The ONLY reason blood fractions are allowed (ALLOWED!!) by the Governing Body is for better public relations spin, and to try for plausible deniability in today's cultures Earth wide so when sued, they will NOT LOSE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY.

I don't look at it that way. Blood fractions are left up to conscience because it is a grey area for some. And when something is a grey area then one shouldn't impose ones' views. Humans were not capable of separating blood into fractions when the prohibitive scripture was written.

9 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

God's admonition against his declared personal property, for which he is jealous and possessive, stated "blood" is not to be used except for two things .... sacrifice to God, as was done in ancient Israel, and pouring it out onto the ground, after slaughtering an animal for food or resources needed by humans, which was an acceptable way of "returning the blood to God".

YES. This is also why many Witnesses won't accept blood fractions, their conscience tells them it is still blood, even if its a fractional part of it.

Eating a bloody steak is also a conscience matter.

[Guest Nicole]

3 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Others will say: ‘It’s not a cake until you mix the ingredients.’

This reminded me when a student told me: JWs must not eat beef liver (a very popular dish where I come from) because it has a lot of blood" also liver produces some of the proteins for the plasma 

[Guest Nicole]

9 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

The ONLY reason blood fractions are allowed (ALLOWED!!) by the Governing Body is for better public relations spin, and to try for plausible deniability in today's cultures Earth wide so when sued, they will NOT LOSE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY.

I remember in my congregation when DPA changed, at the beggining some brothers and sisters said, "no I am not going to accept  any blood fraction because it is the same as receiving a blood transfusion, fractions come from blood, so it is the same blood" but some of that group have changed their mind to "I probably would accept fractions but first doctors have to talk to me or to my legal representative 

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

Billy:

Your writing style has changed dramatically.

Did a committee write that for you?

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

2 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Billy:

Your writing style has changed dramatically.

Did a committee write that for you?

Since the evidence supports that, and without your denial or affirmation, I will take that as a "yes".

Not that I care at all ... just a matter of trying to correctly understand where you are coming from.

[JW Insider]

6 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

Any meat has leftover blood by-product.

Technically, what the meat contains is leftover blood, not "blood by-product." By-product would be the blood that was separated or drained, not the blood still in the meat. 

Just read a rather disturbing article about the many ways in which animal by-products, including whole blood, and blood plasma, are used around the world. Some of the data comes from the USDA.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3614052/

Your write-up, btw, was excellent imo, fwiw.

 

[JOHN BUTLER]

9 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Others will say: ‘It’s not a cake until you mix the ingredients.’

Aren't the ingredients already mixed in this case (blood) and the opposite is done, splitting the 'ingredients' apart. 

If blood is sacred or of high importance to God then surely it should not be messed with or split up in such a way ?

Just a thought, though in practice i still don't think God meant it that way.   

 

[JW Insider]

10 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

From Genesis to Leviticus. Scripture is referring to LIFEBLOOD. Don’t eat the animal without first draining its blood. This is a commandment from God. Is God inferring that you squeeze the animal dry to drain every last drop? No, it means that the life of the animal is the blood, and as soon as the blood is drained, it becomes lifeless and ready for consumption.

This is a good concept to remember, but it produces some questions. If the blood referred to was the LIFEBLOOD then one could discontinue draining as soon as the animal was lifeless. If a live animal, heart beating, was hung upside-down, and then its throat slit, its "LIFEBLOOD" would already be gone even when only half the blood is drained. If the animal was already killed by lethal weapon, blunt force, or from another animal, or even had just died on its own, the amount of blood that could be drained by hanging it upside-down and slitting its throat would be much less than if it died during the draining process. In any case, the Jewish law required that the draining take place, and blood be poured onto the ground, as a kind of ritual of respect. We assume then that the animal was drained at least until the pouring stopped and the pouring turned into a drip. Since it was a ritual of respect before Jehovah, I would assume that it might be kept in position until the dripping had also stopped.

Of course, Christians of most stripes, should be informed by Acts 15 and 21 on this matter, more so than Genesis through Leviticus. Otherwise we would have to treat the fat with the same amount of respect, and the fat has exactly the same problem, not draining out completely when cooking.

• (Leviticus 3:17) 17 “‘It is a lasting statute for your generations, in all your dwelling places: You must not eat any fat or any blood at all.’”

Why was fat put on the same level as blood here? Perhaps we get a hint from the very first use of the word "smell" in the Bible:

• (Genesis 8:20, 21) . . .Then Noah built an altar to Jehovah and took some of all the clean animals and of all the clean flying creatures and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 And Jehovah began to smell a pleasing aroma.. . .

When meat-eaters enjoy a juicy steak, much of the intrinsic flavor is from left-over blood and fat. The "pleasing aroma" of cooked meat comes more from the fat. The blood is poured downward to the ground, and the fat smokes upward "toward heaven."

To me, this says that this Mosaic law was based on a ritual of respect, the same as we see in many cultures who understood the grave seriousness of taking another life, killing a soul. Some Native American cultures were well-known for this, whenever an animal was killed for its meat. Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sacrifice .  Part of the idea is that man shouldn't take another life for pleasure. And enjoying the savory meat as food is taking pleasure from killing another life.

Should note that some cultures preferred to sacrifice by strangling their meat, boiling it whole, etc. (See Scythians in the Wikipedia article above.) Homer and Hesiod wrote of sacrificing/cooking meat on their altars and how their god ("God the Father," Zeus) loved the savory aroma from the fat that rose high into the heavens. (Interesting discussion here: http://www.moyak.com/papers/hesiod-theogony.html )

Of course, turning to the Greek Scriptures, again, we know that Jehovah no longer accepts any animal or human sacrifices after Jesus himself. And, as Jesus' body was never burned, the aroma is obviously figurative, not literal, of course:

• (Ephesians 5:2) . . ., just as the Christ also loved us and gave himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice, a sweet fragrance to God.

Extrapolating from the concept of comparing LIFEBLOOD with "fractionated blood" is a bit too dependent on one particular facet of Hebrew Scripture definitions, without considering other aspects of sacrificial ritual. (It might even imply that less care be taken with blood drainage, when measuring the threshold of blood necessary for life-sustenance compared to the original amount of blood.) And of course, the continuation of the idea in Acts 15, might also be primarily about abstaining from idolatry-related rituals, especially now that Christians realized that sacrificial rituals had no more place in the true worship of God.

[Anna]

12 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

Can a human live a normal life without a heart? Can a human live a normal life without lungs?

This, in essence, is fractioned blood. On their own, it means very little to the human body, since it is just one particular function out of many.

I like this reasoning.

[JW Insider]

1 hour ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

That red liquid is technically referred to as cow bovine, not blood.

No. The red liquid is not technically referred to as cow bovine. It is bovine in the same way that a cow's hide is bovine, or a baseball glove is bovine, or a leather chair, or a kind of saliva, or a certain type of sound, or a kind of meat, or a specific kind of hoofprint in the mud, or a certain kind of "mudpie"/"patty"/"buffalo chip"/etc.

In other words, the milk I drank this morning was bovine, but it did not contain any bovine. The meat I ate last week was bovine, but it did not contain any bovine. There is no such phrase as "cow bovine" as far as I know.

[Anna]

1 hour ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

That red liquid is technically referred to as cow bovine, not blood. 

I've not heard that, must be a butchers term or something. Bovine is usually another name for cow, or cattle