Faith & Blood

Flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof) shall ye not eat.

Genesis 9:4

Members of the Jehovah's Witnesses sect interpret this injunction as a divine ban on blood transfusions. Their view of the matter caused commotion in two Texas hospitals last week.

In Odessa, Grace Marie Olliff, 20, lay critically ill after an auto crash in which her skull, pelvis and left leg were broken. Doctors said that she must have blood transfusions to save her life. The patient said she was not a Jehovah's Witness, would accept the blood. But her father William, 51, pushed into her room and shouted: "You're trying to kill my girl." Flanked by his two sons, he stood guard at the door to prevent a transfusion.

Armed with a court order obtained by the patient's former husband, sheriff's deputies marched into Grace Olliff's room, led the Olliff men off to jail. Doctors started transfusions at once, and by week's end, Grace Olliff had improved enough to be promoted from the "critical" to the "serious" list. She had a better than even chance to live.

In San Antonio, Fred Newhouse, 24, and father of two, had a badly damaged kidney after a collision between his milk truck and a bus. Newhouse himself was a Witness, as was his wife, so there was little likelihood that a court could step in. Newhouse's father (no Witness), his mother (a practical nurse), a Methodist minister, a rabbi and dozens of friends tried to talk him out of his stand. They failed. A transfusion, he argued, would mean "spiritual death."

Doctors were afraid that internal bleeding might start again, but would not operate on the kidney without a transfusion. At week's end Newhouse was still on the critical list.

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