---
title: "Jehovah's Witnesses and blood transfusions"
chunk: 5/7
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah's_Witnesses_and_blood_transfusions"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:43.407186+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Scriptural interpretation ===
Dissident Witnesses say the Society's use of Leviticus 17:12 to support its opposition to blood transfusions conflicts with its own teachings that Christians are not under the Mosaic law. Theologian Anthony Hoekema claims the blood prohibited in Levitical laws was not human, but animal. He cites other authors who support his view that the direction in Acts 15 to abstain from blood was intended not as an everlasting covenant but a means of maintaining a peaceful relationship between Jewish and Gentile Christians. He has described as "absurd literalism" the Witnesses' use of a scriptural prohibition on eating blood to prohibit the medical transfusion of human blood.

=== Coercion ===
Osamu Muramoto has argued that the refusal by Jehovah's Witnesses of "life-saving" blood treatment creates serious bio-medical ethical issues. He has criticized the "controlling intervention" of the Watch Tower Society by means of what he claims is information control and its policy of penalising members who accept blood transfusions or advocate freedom to choose blood-based treatment. He says the threat of being classified as a disassociated Witness and subsequently shunned by friends and relatives who are members coerces Jehovah's Witnesses to accept and obey the prohibition on blood transfusions. In one particular case involving a Russian district court decision, however, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found nothing in the judgments to suggest that any form of improper pressure or undue influence was applied. It noted: "On the contrary, it appears that many Jehovah's Witnesses have made a deliberate choice to refuse blood transfusions in advance, free from time constraints of an emergency situation." The court said: "The freedom to accept or refuse specific medical treatment, or to select an alternative form of treatment, is vital to the principles of self-determination and personal autonomy. A competent adult patient is free to decide ... not to have a blood transfusion. However, for this freedom to be meaningful, patients must have the right to make choices that accord with their own views and values, regardless of how irrational, unwise or imprudent such choices may appear to others."
Muramoto has claimed the intervention of Hospital Liaison Committees can add to "organisational pressure" applied by family members, friends, and congregation members on Witness patients to refuse blood-based treatment. He notes that while HLC members, who are church elders, "may give the patient 'moral support', the influence of their presence on the patient is known to be tremendous. Case reports reveal JW patients have changed their earlier decision to accept blood treatment after a visit from the elders." He claims such organizational pressure compromises the autonomy of Witness patients and interferes with their privacy and confidentiality. He has advocated a policy in which the Watch Tower organization and congregation elders would not question patients on the details of their medical care and patients would not disclose such information. He says the Society adopted such a policy in 1983 regarding details of sexual activity between married couples.
Watch Tower spokesman Donald T. Ridley says neither elders nor HLC members are instructed or encouraged to probe into the health care decisions of Witness patients and do not involve themselves in patient hospitalisations unless patients request their assistance. Yet Watch Tower Society HLC representative David Malyon says he would respond to the "sin" of Witnesses he is privy to by effectively saying "Are you going to tell them or shall I!" Nevertheless Ridley says Muramoto's suggestion that Witnesses should be free to disregard Watch Tower scriptural teachings and standards is preposterous. He says loving God means obeying commandments, not disobeying them, and hiding one's disobedience from others.
Muramoto recommends doctors have a private meeting with patients to discuss their wishes, and that church elders and family members not be present, enabling patients to feel free of church pressure. He suggests doctors question patients on (a) whether they have considered that the Watch Tower Society might soon approve some medical practices they currently find objectionable, in the same manner that it has previously abandoned its opposition to vaccination and organ transplants; (b) whether Witness patients know which blood components are allowed and which are prohibited, and whether they acknowledge that those rulings are organizational policy rather than biblical teachings; and (c) whether they realize that although some Bible scriptures proscribe the eating of blood, eating and transfusing blood have entirely different effects on the body. HLC representative David Malyon has responded that Muramoto's suggested questions are an affront to coerce Jehovah's Witnesses with a "complicated philosophical inquisition" and, if used by doctors, would be "an abusive transformation of the medical role of succour and care into that of devil's advocate and trickster".