Jehovah’s Witness dies after she refuses blood

Winty

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/jehovahs-witness-new-mother-dies-after-she-refuses-to-be-given-blood-9851014.html

A mother who gave birth to a baby conceived naturally after years of failed fertility treatment died in hospital after refusing a blood transfusion because she was a Jehovah’s Witness.
Adeline Keh, 40, became critically ill after her son Mawsi was delivered by caesarean section at the Homerton hospital. She died three weeks later in another hospital after refusing potentially life-saving treatment.
Today her husband told of his grief that “we never came home as a family” as it emerged that the case was one of four maternal deaths in eight months involving the Homerton.
The hospital, in Hackney, has asked NHS England to review the deaths to check for any evidence of common failures in care. The review is expected to be completed next month.
Speaking for the first time since his wife’s death, Kwaku Keh told the Standard: “My wife and I were best friends. We had been trying to have a baby for some time but it had not happened for us even with the help of IVF.






Best friends: Adeline Keh with her husband Kwaku“Then in 2013 my wife got pregnant without medical intervention and our only son was delivered by caesarean section. I was overjoyed and could not wait for them to come home.”
Mrs Keh remained in hospital after her son’s birth on September 18 last year to receive antibiotics for an infection. She developed acute respiratory distress syndrome and was transferred to Papworth, a specialist heart and lung hospital in Cambridge.
She had told doctors of her refusal to receive blood products, and lawyers confirmed her wishes had to be obeyed. She was put on a machine at Papworth but it could not effectively re-oxygenate her blood without a transfusion. She died two days later.
An inquest last month found Mrs Keh died on October 19 last year from a combination of ARDS, sepsis, an infection in the caesarean wound and “refusal of transfusion on religious grounds”.
Coroner Belinda Cheney, in a narrative verdict, said Mrs Keh died from a “rare infective complication”. The source of the infection had been impossible to detect until the post-mortem and the decision not to receive blood “may have compromised the final medical intervention”.

Mr Keh, a lawyer living in Walthamstow, said: “Each time I went to pick her up [from the Homerton] I was told that she could not come home. Eventually my wife lost her fight and passed away and we never got to come home as a family.” The other maternal deaths at the Homerton occurred in July last year and in March and April this year.
Hospital chief executive Tracey Fletcher said she decided to request external reassurance due to the unusually high number of deaths in a short period. She said: “We asked NHS England to look at these cases collectively to make sure we hadn’t missed anything.”
Last year across England and Wales there were 47 deaths of women in pregnancy, during childbirth or in the six weeks after birth.

Pat Williams, the first of the four Homerton mothers to die, suffered from a number of “risk factors” — she was over 40, obese, had previously miscarried and had a large fibroid in her uterus.
Coroner William Dolman described her death, after an elective caesarean, as a “dramatic and sudden tragedy”. He concluded that she died of natural causes after multi-organ failure and a haemorrhage.
In April, the Care Quality Commission watchdog rated the Homerton’s maternity unit “safe” and the hospital as “good”.
But inspectors noted 22 “serious incidents” in maternity between December 2012 and November 2013, including Ms Williams’s death and the “unexpected” death of two newborns.
A Homerton spokesman said the hospital’s status as a high-level maternity unit and its location in east London meant it handled some of the most needy women and babies. It deals with more than 5,000 births a year.
The spokesman said: “The message to mothers is that this is a top-quality service with one of the biggest throughputs of mothers and babies in the capital.”

GLaDOS

That's incredibly sad

ScouseMouse

Its sad that that child, that husband, has no mother/wife due to religious considerations overruling common sense and medical advice.

I hope their church gives the family proper support. I blame them.

Winty

ScienceNerd wrote: »

That's incredibly sad

The reason I posted this story was only a few weeks ago I was talking to a JW on the street and said about blood donation and he told me it was an urban myth used by the media to tell lies about his faith and nobody has ever died.

So now we know the truth

Cabaal

ScouseMouse wrote: »

I hope their church gives the family proper support. I blame them.

I'm sure they'll pray for her and tell the family it was "gods will"

That'll make everything better,

sheesh

well really it was her decision.

Cabaal

Winty wrote: »

.........he told me it was an urban myth used by the media to tell lies about his faith and nobody has ever died.

The only reason for this is the HSE has gone to court to force the blood transfusions to take place....and rightly so!

2000
http://www.rte.ie/news/2000/0922/9051-jehovah/

2011
http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0112/296410-transfusion/

2012
http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/1016/341953-blood-transfusion-jehovahs-witness/

Its evident that deaths would have happened only for these rulings,

DoYouEvenLift

I actually think that's a bit selfish to be honest. Putting your religious beliefs before your own health and newborn child and partner.

Cabaal

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

I actually think that's a bit selfish to be honest. Putting your religious beliefs before your own health and newborn child and partner.

Is it any different to those that put their religious beliefs above other human's?
Sadly every religion is guilty of it

Hotblack Desiato

Whereas if they were strict catholics, the blood transfusion would be grand but IVF a no-no :rolleyes:

Why do people allow their lives to be organised on the basis of completely arbitrary made-up rules?

Brown Bomber

Cabaal wrote: »

The only reason for this is the HSE has gone to court to force the blood transfusions to take place....and rightly so!

2000
http://www.rte.ie/news/2000/0922/9051-jehovah/

2011
http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0112/296410-transfusion/

2012
http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/1016/341953-blood-transfusion-jehovahs-witness/

Its evident that deaths would have happened only for these rulings,

Do you actually think that, or did you just get carried away? That it is "right" to force medicate an adult of sound mind against their will and completely disregard their bodily integrity?

(none of your links actually show this btw)

Pherekydes

Brown Bomber wrote: »

That it is "right" to force medicate an adult of sound mind against their will and completely disregard their bodily integrity?

Funny, but religious leaders usually claim that people who commit suicide are temporarily insane. Yet these people who refuse life saving treatment are of sound mind? Funny, that.

Brown Bomber

Pherekydes wrote: »

Funny, but religious leaders usually claim that people who commit suicide are temporarily insane. Yet these people who refuse life saving treatment are of sound mind? Funny, that.

Not really, not even sure if it's true. What is your view on medicating by force?

Brown Bomber

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Do you actually think that, or did you just get carried away? That it is "right" to force medicate an adult of sound mind against their will and completely disregard their bodily integrity?

(none of your links actually show this btw)

Someone who refuses a blood transfusion for religious reasons is not of sound mind if you ask me. She died because of her decision. Doctors generally know best when it comes to keeping you alive.

Pherekydes

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Not really, not even sure if it's true. What is your view on medicating by force?

Many people might agree with physically restraining someone who was trying to off themselves. Would treating someone who wanted to live but who didn't want a certain treatment be much the same thing?

Personally, I would save the person and face the consequences after.

ShooterSF

sheesh wrote: »

well really it was her decision.

Ultimately. But how many people are indoctrinated into religious beliefs from childhood? And how many take years or even decades to shake off such? I'm sure there are plenty on this forum who had they been brought up JW instead of Catholic and needed a transfusion earlier in life would have refused.

Her decision was influenced by her belief that a transfussion would be morally wrong or a sin. Something she didn't pluck out of thin air. And as such others must shoulder some of the blame.

Brown Bomber

Sacramento wrote: »

Someone who refuses a blood transfusion for religious reasons is not of sound mind if you ask me. She died because of her decision. Doctors generally know best when it comes to keeping you alive.

We have a number of codified human rights to preserve our bodily integrity. This is from the Irish Constitution:

"you have the right not to have your body or personhood interfered with."

Another of our human rights is freedom of religion. I wouldn't be too keen to live in a society that said "you have the right not to have your body or personhood interfered with... Unless you are religious".

Brown Bomber

Pherekydes wrote: »

Many people might agree with physically restraining someone who was trying to off themselves. Would treating someone who wanted to live but who didn't want a certain treatment be much the same thing?

Personally, I would save the person and face the consequences after.

So if you could you would vaccinate the entire population including people who refused to do so willingly?

Ken.

Fertility treatment=ok, blood transfussion=bad. What a warped view.

Brown Bomber

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Another of our human rights is freedom of religion. I wouldn't be too keen to live in a society that said "you have the right not to have your body or personhood interfered with... Unless you are religious".

I'm fine with living in a society that said " you have the right not to have your body or personhood interfered with... unless this decision will directly lead to your needless death."

Situations where blood transfusions are needed to keep someone alive, say, due to blood loss, are pretty cut and dry. If people say no because of religious beliefs or whatever reason (doesn't matter if it's religious or not) they'll die of blood loss. It's just incredibly stupid to me to allow someone to die because they won't allow themselves to be treated.

Brown Bomber

Sacramento wrote: »

I'm fine with living in a society that said " you have the right not to have your body or personhood interfered with... unless this decision will directly lead to your needless death."

Situations where blood transfusions are needed to keep someone alive, say, due to blood loss, are pretty cut and dry. If people say no because of religious beliefs or whatever reason (doesn't matter if it's religious or not) they'll die of blood loss. It's just incredibly stupid to me to allow someone to die because they won't allow themselves to be treated.

I agree that it is stupid. I don't agree that people should be denied the ownership of their own bodies because someone else thinks that they are stupid. Liberty is the freedom to make the wrong choices.

Cork boy 55

If any one of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people
Leviticus 17:10

They have a point in fairness. :cool:

Ken.

I am strongly of the opinion that if an adult refuses life saving care like a blood transfusion then they should be tipped out of the bed and dumped at the door. Plenty of others want the help of doctors lying on trolleys in corridors.

MrPudding

ShooterSF wrote: »

Ultimately. But how many people are indoctrinated into religious beliefs from childhood? And how many take years or even decades to shake off such? I'm sure there are plenty on this forum who had they been brought up JW instead of Catholic and needed a transfusion earlier in life would have refused.

Her decision was influenced by her belief that a transfussion would be morally wrong or a sin. Something she didn't pluck out of thin air. And as such others must shoulder some of the blame.

I have a mate who was raised as a JW but caught himself on. He is now an atheist but it is still borderline whether or not he would accept a blood transfusion. It seems that as well as the religious justification for not having them there is a fair amount of 'scienfic' scaremongering going on as well.

MrP

lazygal

Brown Bomber wrote: »

We have a number of codified human rights to preserve our bodily integrity. This is from the Irish Constitution:

"you have the right not to have your body or personhood interfered with."

Another of our human rights is freedom of religion. I wouldn't be too keen to live in a society that said "you have the right not to have your body or personhood interfered with... Unless you are religious".

Or unless you are pregnant in Ireland and don't wish to be. Plenty of interference in one's body happens when you're pregnant, yet all women are refused the option of doing anything about it.

sbsquarepants

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Do you actually think that, or did you just get carried away? That it is "right" to force medicate an adult of sound mind against their will and completely disregard their bodily integrity?

(none of your links actually show this btw)

I don't think so.
Kids, yes absolutely but once you can make your own mind up it should be up to the individual. If you want to cure your cancer with holy water / homeopathy / voodoo then have at it. It's fúcking idiotic, but there's no law against stupidity.

Brian Shanahan

ScouseMouse wrote: »

I hope their church gives the family proper support. I blame them.

You'll be hoping a long time, the best support they'll get will be "it was god's will that your wife and mother died".

It's long beyond time that religion should be a valid reason for a person refusing required medical treatments, the doctor's job is to help the patient recover, not pander to their delusions.

Orion

It was her own choice - this is Darwinian survival of the fittest imo. If someone wants to throw away their life on the basis of a barmy interpretation of an obscure paragraph in an ancient work of fiction that's up to them. If it was the child they were refusing lifesaving treatment for then the courts should step in but if an adult wants to do it that's their own lookout.

Brian Shanahan

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Another of our human rights is freedom of religion. I wouldn't be too keen to live in a society that said "you have the right not to have your body or personhood interfered with... Unless you are religious".

Well then, you must hate living in Ireland, because the current system here is "you have the right not to have your body or personhood interfered with...unless you follow the soi disant majority faith, roman catholicism". If you're of a religion that considers abortion (whether surgical or pills) guess what, you're **** out of luck. If you're of a religion that thinks exposing their dead for the vulture guess what, you're **** out of luck. If you're of a religion that doesn't want the angelus or rcc mass on national state-funded tv guess what, you're **** out of luck. If you're of atheist or agnostic bent and don't want the state approved religion (despite our constitution specifying that the nation is secular) being pushed on you and your loved ones, well then you're "just a lapsed catholic, sit down and shut the hell up until you regain your senses and return to the sheep-fold".

Allowing a person to refuse valid and vital medical treatment just because they believe in a book written by iron age people who were trying to create an oppressive and mindless theocracy is one of the more obvious and egregious signs that we still haven't quite gotten rid of our past barbarism. There are valid reasons for refusing life-prolonging treatment, like that it would cause such pain as to be counter-productive (I had an uncle who pulled out the lines in his back rather than go through the continued pain of receiving dialysis in such a horrible way {all the easy lines had closed up and were unopenable}), or that the condition is so debilitating that life is unliveable for that person (I'm thinking of Dr. Marie Fleming and others like here here), but to refuse a blood transfusion just because a book which is wrong in its entirity says so, that is morally unjsutifiable, and ethically wrong for the doctor to acquiesce in such a wish.

nozzferrahhtoo

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Another of our human rights is freedom of religion.

I wonder if the morality of the entire situation is that simple, at least in an "ideal world".

For example, if I could be shown to have fed someone false or baseless information which ultimately led to their death, people would be out for my head. And rightly so. If I fed them baseless unsubstantiated information that led them under a truck, to fall of a cliff, to take the wrong medication or whatever.... by misleading them into a decision that caused them to die I would be morally culpable.

Yet somehow call it "religion" and it is all morally ok and above board? To disseminate false nonsense about blood transfusions which ultimately leads people to make decisions that kill themselves or others..... is all ok under this feux banner of "Freedom of religion".

When parents in this world watch their children die, sometimes slowly and painfully, of perfectly treatable illnesses then it is people like you touting this "freedom of religion" nonsense that are part culpable in the blame for this. During the prosecution of such people for murder or manslaughter we even have people standing up and demanding they be found innocent because they were merely practicing their free conscience under their religion.

Those parents, and the women in this thread, may have freedom to themselves have whatever religion they want to have. Sure. But the former in my mind are murderers. And the people who fed the latter unsubstantiated nonsense that led her to make decisions that kill her.... have blood and accountability on their hands too.

In the discussion on drugs many people want laws that prosecute the dealer not the user. Perhaps it should be similar here. It is not, as you paint it in a few of your posts, that one should be forcing people to take treatment against their will or compromising their freedom of bodily integrity, but that we should be targeting the people who feed them lies that lead them to life threatening, or ending, decisions that need to be targeted. Perhaps then, similar to your failure on telling the difference between "profiling" and "negative profiling", and your inability to tell which one anyone is espousing at any one time, you perhaps should consider if you simply have it exactly backwards. Again.

Even with that aside however, is it still even as simple as you make it out to be. There are times when we do step in with enforced medical intervention when the patient is deemed not to be of sound mind or under delusion and so forth. When they are deemed not to be mentally capable of making "the correct" decision for themselves and we see fit to over ride their otherwise personal freedoms of personal integrity.

Given the patient refusing treatment solely on religious grounds is under the delusion of unsubstantiated nonsense, is not then a case to be made, or at least to be argued by better minds that yours or mine, that they are similarly incapable of making "the correct" decision given they are under the delusion of unsubstantiated nonsense? Where does one draw the line on which forms of delusion warrant intervention and which do not?

Is memetic infection somehow less valid than physical tumors, chemical infection, insanity or any of the other cases we already consider as exceptions to the rule? Were she not espousing religious conviction but instead thrashing around the bed refusing treatment because the doctors were actually lizard aliens...... in people suits.... who were trying to inject her with mind altering and mind controlling substances designed by a government who were subservient to these alien invaders.... using those drugs to ensure a servile populace...... would you be making the same noises or would you be supportive of a high court decision to override her refusal and give the transfusion?

If no, then at least you are consistent in your nonsense, but if yes then one wonders exactly where the line can be drawn on which unsubstantiated delusions warrant intervention and which do not. Because BOTH delusions come with exactly the same amount of argument, evidence, data and reasoning to substantiate them (that is to say: none) but one, and not the other, is protected under this magical word "religion" which seems to grant people exceptions to otherwise rational courses of action in a given situation.

"Freedom of religion" is not a catch all term. It simply has got to be contextual, as should in an ideal world most of our laws, morals and ethical intuitions.

nozzferrahhtoo

Orion wrote: »

It was her own choice - this is Darwinian survival of the fittest imo. If someone wants to throw away their life on the basis of a barmy interpretation of an obscure paragraph in an ancient work of fiction that's up to them.

That depends how you look at it I guess. The question being it is "survival of the fittest" of who or what exactly?

For example when an animal infected by a parasite suddenly starts to throw itself into danger, such as an ant which exposes itself to injection by cows when infected with Dicrocoelium dendriticum, or a mouse infected by Toxoplasma gondii who suddenly loses all fear of cats and runs towards them...... clearly "survival of the fittest" is indeed at play here. But not of the mouse or the ant. Of the parasite.

One does not have to stretch far at all to wonder if a memetic infection, rather than a parasitic one, is any less viewable in such terms. Is the "survival of the fittest" of our species served by this woman removing herself from the gene pool? Not really, not very much at all in fact, and that is BEFORE you consider that she managed to reproduce before doing it.

If one however takes a Natural Selection view of the Meme rather than the Gene, one starts to see a very different story. While viruses occasionally kill their hosts they do so as part of a virulence that embodies the successful elements of their species. There is a reason why terminal viruses still propagate. And there is even more reason why an occasionally terminal memetic infection would too.

So while a Darwinian discussion of this story might be warranted, one might not want to come at that discussion from the wrong angle.