Why Jehovah's Witnesses Are Wrong About Blood Transfusions (Pikuach Nefesh)

Jehovah's Witnesses have had a very flip-flop attitude toward blood transfusions over the decades. It began with the Watchtower not having a problem with blood transfusions. Later the Watchtower forbade any medical use of blood at all. Their current policy makes it a personal decision to take different blood fractions (but not hemoglobin).

There are many reasons why this prohibition of blood for medical use, in whole or in part, is erroneous scripturally, but there's one that completely invalidates their view: the principle of pikuach nefesh (Hebrew: פיקוח נפש).

Pikuach nefesh litereally means 'saving a life' in Hebrew. At it's core it means that any time the Law would put a life at risk, the Law is to be ignored in favor of saving the life.

From the ancient (and modern) Jewish perspective, this makes perfect sense. The Jews believe that Torah (the Mosaic Law code) was created for the purpose of enhancing and preserving life -- not taking it. So if applying the Law would result in putting a life at risk it is to be ignored.

Modern secular courts still use this type of reasoning. It's referred to as the "spirit of the law." If a person tries to apply a law in a way that violates its spirit, that application is deemed invalid.

Jesus applied pikuach nefesh on multiple occasions when he healed people on the sabbath. It was a violation of the Law to do any work on the sabbath. Jesus healing qualified as "work" and therefore was a breach of the letter of the law. However, since a person's well-being was at stake, Jesus ignored the Law in favor of pikuach nefesh.

Here's a famous example from the Bible used by Jehovah's Witnesses:

Matthew 12:9-13 (New World Translation)

9 After departing from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10 and look! there was a man with a withered hand! So they asked him, “Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?” so that they might accuse him. 11 He said to them: “If you have one sheep and that sheep falls into a pit on the Sabbath, is there a man among you who will not grab hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do a fine thing on the Sabbath.” 13 Then he said to the man: “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and it was restored sound like the other hand.

Jesus actually took pikuach nefesh farther than Orthodox Judaism does. Orthodox Judaism states that a person's life must be in imminent danger in order for the principle to be applied. That is, if you don't break the Law right now, the person is likely to die. Jesus, however, went much further than that by healing a person even though it was not a life-threatening disease. For Jesus, the fact that the person's well-being was at stake was enough to apply pikuach nefesh.

So when Jehovah's Witnesses quote scriptures to try and prove that blood is sacred and should not be used in medical procedures (blood transfusions), they are not taking into account Jesus' example of applying this ancient Jewish principle. Even if a person's life is not in imminent danger, if a blood transfusion would be beneficial to their health and well-being, Jesus' example makes it clear that the Law is to be ignored in favor of the individual's health.

There are other lines of evidence that the Watchtower's stance is invalid, such as the fact that the laws in both the Old and New Testament regarding blood are dietary in nature and not medical (and the body processes blood very differently when ingested than when given intravenously). None of that matters, though, because even if the Watchtower's erroneous view of those scriptures was accurate, pikuach nefesh would rule the day, allowing Witnesses to have blood transfusions when their health and well-being are at stake.

For more details on pikuach nefesh, see the Wikipedia article on the subject.