Saturday, October 29, 2016

Did Eloise Dupuis Truly Know the Risks of Refusing a Blood Transfusion?

A TRAGIC CASE has been in the news lately of a beautiful young woman just starting out in life, expecting a baby, fulls of dreams and plans for the future. All that came crashing down when Eloise Dupuis turned down a life-saving blood transfusion and died. She left her child motherless and her young husband without a wife.

A visit to her Facebook page shows a young woman with a huge smile, a sweet countenance, a young woman full of life. But because of a teaching imposed on her from her youth, a teaching that has for decades been enforced through punitive action (total shunning and loss of critically important relationships for any who refused to comply), Dupuis, like others before her, became a victim of arbitrary policies.

Did Dupuis Truly Know the Risks?
According to an October 28, 2016 Maclean's article, A Jehovah’s Witness and Her Deadly Devotion and under Quebec's Civil Code, "the three components of informed consent are full information, competence, and lack of coercion."

While it's a given that Eloise may have been competent, t
wo of the components around informed consent were lacking in this case. It cannot be said that she was ever given full (and medically-accurate) information, and because of that, even if she believed there may have been some degree of risk, she still was not equipped to make a sound medical decision and she did not fully understand the gravity and enormity of the risks. Instead of allowing trained medical professionals to save her life, she took the advice of untrained men and obeyed their directives.

This post is part of a series and will address the "full information" aspect of informed consent and how a lack thereof played a part in her death.

Filtered and Incomplete Information
JWs are told that taking a blood transfusion is riskier than refusing blood and this is reinforced with reminders of supposed risks, such as that of contracting AIDS and other diseases. As taken from the horse's mouth, at the JW.org site there are plenty of examples of this in action in articles like Blood Transfusion--How Safe? and Quality Alternatives to Transfusion and The Blood That Really Saves

JWs were and likely still are also told that transfusions actually cause bleeding, so if they have already lost a lot of blood, taking a transfusion endangers them because they would lose more blood. They are told that non-blood alternatives are safer and given much information to support that contention (see article above). So they believe, based on what they have been told, that the decision they are making is likely the safest one and makes sense from a medical standpoint.

I know this because I was inside for 24 years, so I'm well aware of the type of information given to members. To recap: Eloise was not privy to full information. The information she received was from one party and filtered and presented in a one-sided fashion designed to support that same party's interpretations and policies. Witnesses are given information wherein the Society cites medical sources and provides quotes from same, but the information is carefully selected (partial information) so that Witnesses only read what supports Society' objectives. 

This is akin to someone telling you what they have read out of medical textbooks and studies but not allowing you to read them for yourself, so you have no way to determine if the information has been cherry picked or truly presents a well-rounded view. JWs are told that there is no need for them to do independent research, that all their information is prepared for them from "God's sole channel." Unfortunately, this organization has been taken to task for taking quotes out of context and misrepresenting what experts have actually said. 

For the sake of brevity, I haven't included specific examples of quotes taken out of context but readers can search online to verify what has been stated here. See: Misquotes, Deceptions and Lies.

What is also well-known within the ranks is that experts and expert opinion are largely dismissed if these experts are "worldly." That is, until the Society needs to legitimize something, then these same worldly experts are turned to as sources to cite to validate whatever statement is being made.

Take-away: Dupuis was not given full information as it relates to satisfying the criteria around informed consent and therefore could not fully understand the risks.

Author's Note: In 24 years on the inside, I heard of cases where Jehovah's Witnesses died after refusing blood transfusions but never, and I mean NEVER, were we ever told that these deaths were a direct result of refusing blood. The blame was always shifted. If the person had cancer and was told they needed a transfusion, why, it was actually the cancer that killed them, not refusing blood--and haters were just trying to blame the religion; if a person developed an infection, it was actually the infection that killed them. The same scenario is now unfolding in Dupuis' case with misinformation being spread that infection killed her. Please see second paragraph under the heading Deeply Disturbed News Bulletin: Éloïse Dupuis Dead at 27 – Watchtower Claims Another Victim, Son Left Motherless. 

And in what I now look back on as completely surreal but that JWs readily accepted as true, doctors were blamed. We were told that certain doctors had a vendetta against JWs and in anger because someone refused a blood transfusion, were rougher than they needed to be, which caused hemorrhaging and death. I remember two specific cases where we were told of women who had D&Cs, and it was alleged that their deaths were due to unnecessarily rough treatment at the hands of the doctors performing the procedures. When you think about this rationally, what doctor would risk years of schooling and their medical license by unnecessarily slicing up a patient's insides? And what about review boards that examine whether medical malpractice has occurred?

And finally, what does this organization have to say about tragic deaths like Eloise's? "Jehovah's Witnesses have been targets of false accusations - barefaced lies and twisted presentations of their beliefs... The accusation that numerous children of Jehovah's Witnesses die each year as a result of refusing blood transfusions is totally unfounded." Watchtower 1998 December 1 p.14 

Try telling that to the Dupuis family. Rest in Peace, Eloise. 

Please see Part 2, Was Eloise Dupuis a Victim of Undue Influence?

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