Coagulopathy After Cardiopulmonary Bypass in Jehovah’s Witness Patients: Management of and for the Individual Rather than the Religious Institution

Jehovah’s Witnesses read with interest the case study by Sniecinski et al. (1) concerning advances in treating patients who refuse certain products made from blood. Some Jehovah’s Witnesses fit this profile. Accordingly, we are grateful to medical science for advances facilitating safe perioper-ative care for patients with this preference. Sniecinski et al. (1) report the cases of two Jehovah’s Witness patients, both of whom accepted transfusions from the donated and stored blood supply. This transfusion of products made from donor blood naturally leads one to question claims, made by some Jehovah’s Witnesses, of abstaining from donor blood. This difficulty is amplified when reading power of attorney documents published by the Watchtower stating that Jehovah’s Witnesses have the option of accepting literally everything from a given unit of donated blood so long as it is sufficiently fractionated beforehand. Understandably, health care providers are left wondering how a person can lay claim to abstaining from blood as an underlying tene