You Have the Right to Choose - Continue with RELIEVING THE LEGAL CONCERNS

Witnesses will also sign hospital consent forms.  One used at a hospital in Freiburg, Germany, has space where the physician can describe the information he gave the patient about the treatment. Then, above the signatures of the physician and the patient, this form adds:  "As a member of the religious body of Jehovah's Witnesses, I categorically refuse the use of foreign blood or blood components during my surgery.  I am aware that the planned and needed procedure thus has a greater risk due to bleeding complications.  After receiving thorough explanation particularly about that, I request that the needed surgery be performed without using foreign blood or blood components." - Herz Kreislauf, August 1987. 

Actually, non-blood management may have a lower risk.  But the point here is that Witness patients happily relieve any needless concerns so that the medical personnel can move forward in doing what they are committed to do, helping people get well.  This cooperation benefits all, as Dr. Angelos A. Kambouris showed in "Major Abdominal Operations on Jehovah's Witnesses": 

"Preoperative agreement should be views as binding by the surgeon and should be adhered to regardless of events development during and after operation.  [This] orients the patients positively toward their surgical treatment and diverts the surgeon's attention from the legal and philosophical considerations to the surgical and technical ones, thus, allowing him to  perform optimally and serve his patient's best interests." -The American Surgeon, June 1987. 

Each competent physician likely considered risks and benefits, but now you have to weigh the risks and possible benefits, as well as other factors that you best know. (You are in the best position to consider such aspects as your emotional and spiritual strength, family finances, effect on the family, and your own ethics.)  Then you make a choice.  Possibly you give informed consent for one therapy but decline the other. 

Next time: You Have the Right to Choose -Conclusion of RELIEVING THE LEGAL CONCERNS

From the jw.org publications