The autonomy that is expressed through informed consent is a fundamental value in bioethics 6. The conflict between values and duties: the ethical-legal problem for physicians He or she would more likely be devastated by the feeling that someone had taken advantage of a moment of weakness due, for example, to illness or unconsciousness, to impose a form of treatment totally at odds with his or her wishes and consent” 5. The reply, dated 24 th May 2001, stated that for a Witness, who believes in the resurrection of the body, “the problem is unlikely to be seen in terms of resurrection and life eternal.

On 16 th May 2001 the Belgian Advisory Committee, which was in the process of preparing a document on the question of blood transfusions for Jehovah’s Witnesses (see below), wrote to the Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses of Belgium asking them to explain the “spiritual impact of giving a blood transfusion to a Jehovah’s Witness”.

There is thus the possibility that at some future time the official position may change, or at least become less rigid 3, 4. The ethical and legal issues raised by the refusal of a potentially life-saving transfusion are dramatic 1, and it is worth noting that they are a matter of debate even among Jehovah’s Witnesses 2. They also refuse both natural and recombinant haemoglobin, although positions differ among them regarding blood-derived products such as albumin, immunoglobulin and coagulation factors. Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse transfusions of whole blood, of red and white corpuscles, platelets and plasma. “For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves ye shall do well (Acts 15, 28–29).Īlthough the above verses clearly refer to blood as food, an article published in the movement’s magazine The Watch Tower on 1 st July 1951 argued that food and blood transfusions amount to the same thing. “Only thou shalt not eat the blood thereof thou shalt pour it upon the ground as water” (Deuteronomy 15, 23). “For it is the life of all flesh the blood of it is for the life thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off” (Leviticus 17, 14). “Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourneth among you eat blood” (Leviticus 17, 12). “And whatsoever man there be of the House of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you that eateth any manner of blood I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people” (Leviticus 17, 10). But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat” (Genesis 9, 3–4). The Society leaders based their conclusions on parts of the Scripture, specifically: “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you even as the green herb have I given you all things. However, it was not until 1945 that the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (the legal organisation of leaders of the Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, usually known simply as the Watch Tower Society) concluded that blood transfusions are contrary to divine law. Russell formed a movement based on a literal millennialist interpretation of the Bible.

Jehovah’s Witnesses originated near Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) in the 1870s, when Charles T. Reasons for the refusal of blood transfusions by Jehovah’s Witnesses

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