Using Somebody Else's Lung = Okay

Using their blood = not okay

Can somebody explain the logic behind this?

No.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Using their blood = not okay

Can somebody explain the logic behind this?

The latest government data show that one of every 400 units transfused is associated with an adverse event like an allergic reaction, circulatory overload or sepsis. Well, apparently the logic is that in spite of the wacky reasons of patients the blood transfusion is actually risky and might be a good thing to eliminate if possible.

There's also a cost factor: The economy is also helping the blood management movement. Processing and transfusing a single unit of blood can cost as much as $1,200, and many hospitals are trying to cut back. Administrators at Methodist said their bloodless lung transplants typically cost 30 percent less than other lung transplants, partly because careful management of hemoglobin levels before surgery has resulted in fewer complications and shorter stays.

I still think it's wrong as fuck to be willing to let a patient die on the table when there is blood there though. Let the "sin" be the docs and not the persons if it makes them feel better.

1-in-every-400 is pretty good odds, especially in a medical procedure. I'd jump on that in a New York minute.

Unless the surgery is an emergency situation, you can have your own blood drawn for use in the surgery. The last time I went under the knife, I was going to do that, but then I found out that after charging me $350 per pint for extracting and storing the blood, they would throw it out if it wasn't used. I thought it would be a great idea to have my blood drawn and then donated to the blood bank if it wasn't used, but it pissed me off that the cost of drawing my blood didn't include some test that they perform for donated blood, and they refused to do the test. So I just went ahead and told them to use whatever blood they had lying around. Of course, it cost $750 for typing and matching two pints of blood, which then were not needed.

I guess the Witnesses don't even believe in using their own blood, though. That's really fucking stupid.

For future reference, the relevant verse is Leviticus 17:14.

"You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood."

Nuthin' 'bout lungs. JWs don't seen to mind stretching to a non-literal meaning of 'eat' either. I assume they are just playing safe.

keithprosser3 wrote:

For future reference, the relevant verse is Leviticus 17:14.

"You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood."

The only time I recall actually eating blood was fried duck blood in 1969 in albuquerque prepared by a Hungarian refugee. Actually pretty good. And not as strange as the overall situation.
May not be applicable to Leviticus: the blood was no longer "the life of" the ducks as they were, of course, quite dead.

Technicality.
Do you think Leviticus was talking about blood being used for transfusions? Or using blood from the living?
What uses would they have actually had, now that I think about it.

Leviticus is basically a book of rules on how to be holy. Some of the rulesshow some sort of sense (such as the leprosy laws), but many of the rules seem petty and arbitrary. One reason for having a rule is that it outlaws for the Hebrews practices that were common amongst their other Canaanite neighbours - the idea being to keep the Hebrews pure, holy and uncontaminated by foreign false gods and religions (and consequently keep the Hebrews subjugated by their Yahwist priests!).

It may not be that the Hebrews had any special purpose for blood, rather than their neighbours having one. Drinking blood or eating nearly raw meat may have been a custom of the Hebrews rascally neighbours.