I give and would recieve blood. I'm on the bone marrow donation register also, though it'd be unlikely for me to be called on for a non-family-member as bone marrow is so hard to match.

During my brother's birth (placenta praevia, 31 weeks) my mother lost an estimated 80% of her blood volume in around 15minutes. She was given blood and survived. I was born 3 years later and thus owe my life to blood donation. One could not (and as far as i know still cannot) survive 80% blood volume loss. One of my closest friends had a very difficult birth 3 years ago and suffered repeated haematoma's and recieved 15 units of blood in the first 4 days after the birth. I don't know if she'd have lived without the blood, but she was certainly extremely ill.

I know a person who works in a lab searching for an effective treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, an i know they use blood in their work because she is often anaemic (they use their OWN blood for certain parts of the assay). She feels her work is valuable enough to make her own life uncomfortable for it. I would tend to agree with her i suppose.

It's a shame there aren't widespread JW doctors who will treat bloodlessly. I can understand that especially in the UK blood medicine is effective and quick in most cases when compared to bloodless and they just don't have the money to train or research alternative answers for questions they have already answered adequately (if not perfectly). Since Jews do not need a doctor for a circumcision, you would hope that JW's would be able to access more specific medical care.

It is likely i a a poor person to ask though. After watching various family members ail and die and nursing my mother through several major surgeries, chemo, radio, and then holding her hand as she died (ironically, for this thread, of slow internal bleeding from a tumour eating into the vena cava) my attitude to illness is to pull out every stop, to fight every step, to do anything and everything to alleviate, prevent or cure illness. My attitude is that death lies ahead of me, opting out of unnecessary suffering en route is a no-brainer.

Bx