Prayer and nothing else

[Menotu]

Your kid's sick. Really sick. Do you take him to the doctor or just pray?

Prayer is, it's said, the most powerful thing you can do for/against someone.
Medicine, while imperfect, is also powerful. It saves lives, makes lives better, etc.

Is there anyone here that would not take their child/spouse to the doctors and use only prayer instead?

"Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them."

Is it your faith that's weak or God's ability?

[Difflugia]

What you say about blood lets me know that you've done very little study on the subject.

Anyone that has done any research on the subject knows that blood transfusions are harmful and slow recovery. It is a medical fact that non-blood treatment is superior to blood based treatment.

You know, I'm regularly accused of "little study" by creationists, climate change deniers, antivax folks, and homeopathy proponents. In the spirit of my responses to them, I'd suggest that you both may want to do some research without the Watch Tower Society filtering the data for you.

Medical technology is at a point where blood transfusion is sufficiently invasive that reducing or eliminating the practice when practical is worth investigating. This is the same situation we were in a few years ago when routine mammograms were less effective than newer detection technologies and actually made things worse when combined with the new technologies. Blood transfusion is in the same boat. Blood transfusion guidelines were developed when the level of technology was much lower, so choosing a transfusion to protect a patient's health is worse when newer technologies are available.

I chose the scenario I did on purpose, however. One unambiguous case where such technologies and alternate therapies are not available is emergency resuscitation from blood loss through trauma. The military has quite a bit of experience with this. Patients that are in hemorrhagic shock because of low blood volume need a transfusion with something or they die. Because whole blood is expensive to obtain, keep fresh, and transport, the military has a vested interest in finding alternatives. Unfortunately for their bottom line, fresh blood offers the highest 24-hour and 30-day survival rates for victims of trauma leading to hemorrhagic shock.

So, is adherence to doctrine important enough to withhold blood from your critically injured child?

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 11 by Difflugia]

As I said Jehovahs Witnesses insist on the best medical treatment for their children.

Since you express a regard for research I ferl confident you read all the quotations and watched the video(s) in my post above.
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 93#1003693

In view of the above and with due regard for your own independent research my question is Are you suggesting that a blood transfusions is superior as a medical treatemeent to its non-blood alternatives?



JW

[Difflugia]

[Replying to post 11 by Difflugia]

As I said Jehovahs Witnesses insist on the best medical treatment for their children. Are you suggesting the blood transfusions are superior to its non-blood alternatives?

In the case that I offered (a person with trauma from a car accident leading to critically low blood pressure), yes.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 11 by Difflugia]

As I said Jehovahs Witnesses insist on the best medical treatment for their children. Are you suggesting the blood transfusions are superior to its non-blood alternatives?

In the case that I offered (a person with trauma from a car accident leading to critically low blood pressure), yes.

Why?


JW

[Difflugia]

Why?

Fresh blood offers the highest 24-hour and 30-day survival rates for victims of trauma leading to hemorrhagic shock.

[JehovahsWitness]

Why?

Fresh blood offers the highest 24-hour and 30-day survival rates for victims of trauma leading to hemorrhagic shock.

Compared to what? Are you comparing fresh blood to non fresh blood or to something else?

Massive blood loss signals trauma that would normally lead to anyway death anyway (if someone cut off your head a blood transfusion isn't going to help), First response to trauma is usually a non blood fluid expander and the paper (link below) states "no consensus can be found for a single and ideal fluid" in such cases. Is the paper you linked to comparitive study?
https://healthmanagement.org/c/icu/issu ... -in-trauma

[Difflugia]

Are you suggesting the blood transfusions are superior to its non-blood alternatives?

Yes.

Why?

Fresh blood offers the highest 24-hour and 30-day survival rates for victims of trauma leading to hemorrhagic shock.

Compared to what?

I'm not playing twenty questions. You have the paper and presumably access to everything else I looked at. If you have an argument other than "Really? Really?" then make it.

As a head start, the Google search that gave me the best results was:

Code: Select all

trauma "hemorrhagic shock" "non blood" transfusion resuscitation

Military studies had the most data covering the widest range of both circumstances and therapies.

Massive blood loss signals trauma that would normally lead to anyway death anyway (if someone cut off your head a blood transfusion isn't going to help)

It's actually the other way around. The leading cause of death proximate to trauma is exsanguination. Patients that were killed outright by CNS damage would "normally" have bled out.

First response to trauma is usually a non blood fluid expander and the paper (link below) states "no consensus can be found for a single and ideal fluid" in such cases.

As long as there are enough red blood cells to continue oxygenating organs, that's true. In fact, as long as there are, fluid resuscitation is the exact situation that the medical community is beginning to question. When there's not, the treatment invariably involves either whole blood or "packed red blood cells." Otherwise the patient suffers organ failure due to lack of oxygen.

Is the paper you linked to comparitive study?

Yes.

I suspect, though, that this discussion isn't actually about effectiveness and that might be a red herring. Let's make the question a purely hypothetical one and ask it thus:

If you knew for a fact that a blood transfusion were the only non-prayer therapy that would save your child's life, would you authorize one?

[JehovahsWitness]

Why?

Fresh blood offers the highest 24-hour and 30-day survival rates for victims of trauma leading to hemorrhagic shock.

Compared to what?

Is the paper you linked to a comparitive study?

Yes.

And what was it comparing?

I'm not playing twenty questions.

How convenient.


I'm not a medical healthcare professional and I don't understand what it means when it says...

(1) WFWB, who were transfused WFWB, RBCs, and plasma but not apheresis platelets and (2) CT, who were transfused RBC, plasma, and apheresis platelets but not WFWB. The primary outcomes were 24-hour and 30-day survival.

(I suspect this has nothing to do with non-blood expanders but I will await your response). Since you provided the study perhaps you can explain what they are comparing in layman language and how that supports your point.

Do you know?



JW

[Difflugia]

How convenient.

Like your unwillingness to answer the only question you've been asked without equivocating? This isn't the first time you've resorted to shotgunning questions when having trouble with an argument.

You are making the argument that the standard of care, which just happens to conflict with your religion, is not included in the definition of "best medical care" and are now asking me to defend the standard of care against assertions you haven't supported.

I'm not a medical healthcare professional and I don't understand what it means when it says...

(1) WFWB, who were transfused WFWB, RBCs, and plasma but not apheresis platelets and (2) CT, who were transfused RBC, plasma, and apheresis platelets but not WFWB. The primary outcomes were 24-hour and 30-day survival.

WFWB = Warm Fresh Whole Blood
RBCs = Red Blood Cells
CT = Control (using accepted "standard of care" as the control)
apheresis platelets = platelets removed from whole blood and stored separately

You're going to have trouble finding studies with situations involving massive blood loss, but treatments using no blood products at all. That's because without enough red blood cells, the patient dies of organ failure, regardless of blood volume or pressure. There are some preliminary studies involving a product called PolyHeme, but that's made from expired red blood cells, so you still have the same problem. There have been some studies with animals involving artificial hemoglobin or hemoglobin-like oxygen carriers, but no human ones because the treatments that exist now tend to cause liver and lung damage.

Maybe I just missed them, though. See if you can find studies involving the attempted resuscitation of low-hematocrit patients with no blood products at all. I don't think you will. That raises the question of the basis for your assertion in the first place. If there is even a single situation where someone can be resuscitated with blood or blood products, but not without them, how is precluding all blood "the best" medical care?

[JehovahsWitness]

I'm not a medical healthcare professional and I don't understand what it means when it says...

(1) WFWB, who were transfused WFWB, RBCs, and plasma but not apheresis platelets and (2) CT, who were transfused RBC, plasma, and apheresis platelets but not WFWB. The primary outcomes were 24-hour and 30-day survival.

WFWB = Warm Fresh Whole Blood
RBCs = Red Blood Cells
CT = Control (using accepted "standard of care" as the control)
apheresis platelets = platelets removed from whole blood and stored separately

Okay thanks, so you can explain how that study supports your point? I cannot see that it even deals with non-blood treatment at all. If there are no relative studies comparing blood based to non-blood treatments of trauma victims at all I can't see how you can supoort your claim that blood is better in such cases. I certainly can't ses how the study you referenced does.




JW