Comments about ‘A meeting of hearts if not minds between Jehovah's Witnesses and an atheist doctor’

Many Jehovah's Witnesses take blood now in 2012.

They take all fractions of blood. This includes hemoglobin, albumin, clotting factors, cryosupernatant and cryopoor too, and many, many, others.
If one adds up all the blood fractions the JWs takes, it equals a whole unit of blood. Any, many of these fractions are made from thousands upon thousands of units of donated blood.

Jehovah's Witnesses can take Bovine *cow's blood* as long as it is euphemistically called synthetic Hemopure.Jehovah's Witnesses also take whole blood, as long as it's called "current therapy." This is something not found in medical literature, per se. But, it is described by the religion as a taking of blood from a person, mixing it with compounds in a lab, and later retransfusing the blood back into the patient.

Jehovah's Witnesses do take blood products now.Some individual JW are purist and abstain but their Watchtower Society now allows 95 percent of the content of Red Cross donated blood.

'"Just because someone makes a decision which I would view as the wrong decision ... doesn't mean at that point in time I say, 'No, I am not going to look after you anymore,'" he said. "I try and treat people's religious beliefs with respect."

? ? ?' - aritcle

So, in terms of respect, we should only offer respect to one side?

No.

BOTH sides should get respect. And, while this article highlights the respect given to the Jehovah's Witnesses'...

try giving some respect to Atheist's, as well.

If an atheist can do this to help people in the medical field despite differences in belief, how come devout christians who are doctors or work at a pharmacy cannot take the same approach towards birth control and abortion? I think this is one of my favorite stories Ive read on Dnews, thank you.

L Kaiser, excellent question, and you'd think that everyone would think as this, right?

Still, I don't know that it's the same issue, because the ethical "dilemma" doesn't have the same consequences or impact. So I don't think they're in conflict.

Here's how I would frame it, so that it is not in conflict... (your mileage may vary. :)

The Atheist is clearly saving lives by assisting the JW's in the manner that they desire to receive assitance, so it doesn't come into conflict with the hypocratic oath (sp?) by which doctors live by.

A religious believer likewise is true to his/her hypocratic oath, by refusing to assist in a procedure that he/she believes will extinguish human life.

One of the problems many who don't share the same religious compunctions have is that they simply don't believe that the believers REALLY BELIEVE what they state they believe--or they think those beliefs are dismissible. That creates an impasse.

This atheist is remarkable because he refuses to create an impasse, sticking to his moralilty, and imo that's praiseworthy. However there's no element of compulsion either. If the state mandated that every atheist doctor would have to behave this way, do you honestly think that every atheist doctor would do so without complaint?

Yet the government desires to compell other religious believers to act against their own personal moral code.

And therein is the conflict.

(Hope that helps...)

He sounds like a great doctor.