So I've been hearing on the news lately about a 16 year old that was court ordered to accept a blood transfusion.  She had refused it because she was a Jehovah's Witness and it is against her religion.  That got me to wondering where that practise came from.  So, I've done a little research.   Here's what I found:

On the Jehovah's Witness web site there is a list of their beliefs and where they come from in the bible (http://www.watchtower.org/library/jt/article_03.htm).  I recommend reading it, either for humour sake or the old doctrine "Know thy enemy".  Not saying that they are my enemy per say, but it always helps to know their beliefs if they come to your door and you want to debate with them.

Anyway, the belief in question they called "Taking blood into body through mouth or veins violates God's laws".  They gave a number of biblical references for this belief, so I looked them up.

Genesis

9:3 - Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.
9:4 - But flesh with the life thereof, [which is] the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.

Leviticus

17:14 - For [it is] the life of all flesh; the blood of it [is] for the life thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh [is] the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.

Acts

15:28 - For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things;
15:29 - That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.

Even if the bible is the word of God, (which I personally don't believe, but that's a whole other argument), there isn't anything here that suggests that it is talking about anything other than cannibalism.   Think about when this was written - almost two millennia ago.  Nobody had even conceived of a blood transfusion back then.  And cannibalism probably was an actual problem they had to deal with.  Think of it, some lowly peasant starving, floodwaters washed away his crop, but his neighbour managed to survive and is now all plump and tasty.  The guy wanders over, WHAM!, and tosses his neighbour on the barbecue for a feast.   Nowadays that would be unheard of, but back then, who knows?

And if it isn't God's word, then it makes even more sense.  The people who wrote it figured out that to make a stable civilisation, cannibalism probably would be somewhat distasteful (pun intended).  So, they included these passages to make sure that all their followers didn't start eating each other.

But some idiot decided to take it literally and said that this includes blood transfusions.  His name was Thomas Bartholin (1616-80), professor of anatomy at the University of Copenhagen.  He said "Either manner of taking [blood] accords with one and the same purpose, that by this blood a sick body be nourished or restored."  (Found that on the JW website too.)  So, a two thousand year old rule against cannibalism now transforms itself to a rule that you can't accept blood from a willing donor to save your life.  The Jehovah's Witnesses then adopted it for their purposes.

According to their web site, in 2001 there were 6,117,666 Jehovah's Witnesses around the world (and I couldn't help but smirk at the last three digits of that total).  And in my brief bit of research, I found they don't all hold to the strict doctrine of denying blood transfusions.   But I bet a large portion of them do.  I wonder how many have died because of it.  I wonder how many children have died because their parents refused to let them have a blood transfusion.  If it were just the adults, I wouldn't really care.  It would be a Darwinism, survival of the fittest, death to the stupid.  But if a parent denies a child a chance at life, that bugs me.  Which of course brings me back to the 16 year old that tried to refuse the blood transfusion.  I have to wonder about her parents, letting her even think about refusing treatment.  It just doesn't make sense to me.

Ah, religion bashing.  They make it too easy sometimes.