A TEENAGE Jehovah’s Witness who was crushed by a car as it crashed into a shop died after refusing a blood transfusion in hospital.
Joshua McAuley, 15, was airlifted to hospital from the incident in Smethwick, West Midlands, on Saturday morning, but died later that day at around 5.30pm.
A JW anti-blood transfusion tag
The schoolboy, who sustained abdominal and leg injuries, is believed to have told doctors at Birmingham’s Selly Oak Hospital not to give him a blood transfusion because of his religious beliefs.
Clive Parker, an elder at Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Smethwick, where Joshua and his family worshipped, said Joshua was conscious after the accident and “made a stand on the blood issue”.
He said:
I don’t want to talk about it any more than that because I don’t want to add to the family’s distress. A mother has lost her son, and Joshua had a brother. He has lost his brother, he was there in the morning and then gone by the afternoon. They are terribly distressed.
A spokesman for Selly Oak Hospital said he could not comment on the individual case but described the issue as an “extraordinarily complex area” with no set rules.
He said:
There is not one single policy and not one single law regarding transfusions. There is no automatic right to override parental wishes or that of a minor. It is a very complex area that has to be approached on a case-by-case basis.
He added:
Any decisions that have to be made are made in consultation with as many people as possible.
A post-mortem examination is expected to be carried out by a Home Office pathologist tomorrow.
A spokesman for West Midlands Police said Joshua’s family, who live in Smethwick, did not wish to speak about the tragedy.
He said:
The family of Joshua has asked for privacy at this difficult time… we ask that their privacy is respected.
Two other adults were injured in the crash, which happened in the Cape Hill area at 11.14am.
Police said a 24-year-old woman was in a serious but stable condition in hospital, and a 32-year-old man sustained a suspected broken arm and leg.
A 28-year-old man from the Winson Green area of Birmingham who was arrested after the crash was bailed pending further inquiries, police said.
McAuley’s death came in the same month that the Jehovah’s Witness parents of a seriously ill five-year-old disowned him after he was given a blood transfusion in Ghana.
Thanks to the six or so readers who emailed us links to the story.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
May 18th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
A little off topic, BD, I know (I seem to be doing that a lot, lately) but I think this might interest some people (and I can’t figure out how to access email links on my phone):
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/.....tml?hpt=T2
As to the kid, it’s a terrible tragedy. His parents brainwash him into a death cult, by telling him he’s going to a magical place when he dies. All these adults, I have little pity for. Yes, it’s sad they were brainwashed as kids, but at some point you have to be responsible for your own actions, and there is a near-infinite amount of information out there about Life, the Universe, and Everything. This poor kid never had a chance.
May 18th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
Under any other circumstances a medical professional who deliberately allows a person to die by withholding treatment would be charged with gross negligence and barred from practising. So it is OK to indulge religious fantasies and let a child die but not OK to take a terminally ill person to Dignitas; another case of one law for us and a different law for the religious zealots.
May 18th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Who says they were withholding treatment? This boy would of been treated with many, usually very effective, alternative treatments to blood, its not like he would of just been left to die. I suggest you read up on Bloodless Medicine and Surgery.
This kid died because he was hit by a car and crushed against a wall suffering severe abdominal and leg injuries, not “because he refused a transfusionâ€, that’s just ignorant. Are you truly aware of the extent of his injuries? Transfusions are not and have never been a miracle cure. Many people, unfortunately, die every day in road/traffic accidents because of their injuries, even after transfusions – but it seems if the person is found to be a JW then it gets reported their death was due to “not having transfusions”, regardless of how serious the injuries were. No-one should blame either the religious beliefs of the patient, nor the carers who tried their best. The bottom line is, the driver of the car was the cause of his death, not the boys beliefs, nor any failings of the carers.
B.
May 18th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Insane religious beliefs really do poison everything. There is no free thought, sexual partners are selected, genitals mutilated in the most horrible way, chilrden are raped by pervert Priests, idiotic followers are bilked out of money by fraudulent televangelists, psychotic Muslim want blow each other up and evil Jehovah’s Witness refuse to allow blood transfusions leading to death. Minorities are persecuted
How can anyone sit there with a straight face and say religion is moral
May 18th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
“Opinion is divided on the subject” again!
I agree with Angela_K. The parents want the child to die: the health professionals want him to live. What’s so bloody “complex” about that?
May 18th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
The truly sad thing is, this boy will be held up as an example of piety in the face of death and used to inspire others to make the same lethal decisions in the name of imaginary god, all to get into a heaven that isn’t there.
May 18th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
@rog
JW’s don’t believe “in going to heaven”. Perhaps it might be a good idea to at least know something about their beliefs before making comments. Jehovah Witnesses want to live and will always seek the best medical treatment, apart from blood.
Beliefs
http://www.jw-media.org/aboutjw/beliefs.htm
Wiki – Bloodless Medicine & Surgery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodless_surgery
http://www.noblood.org
May 18th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Becky: Many JWs have died because they have refused blood transfusions. Their reasons for so doing depend on a complete misunderstanding of what the Bible is supposed to be teaching. How can otherwise intelligent people be so stupid and gullible?
May 18th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
In common with the majority of contributors here, I’m feeling a mix of sympathy, anger and incredulity. I suppose these are the usual range of emotions you get with a story like this.
I was wondering how these feelings are balanced in our ex-JWs given your unique perspectives? I hope it’s not too personal a question.
May 18th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Becky is right up to a point, in that no one can be sure that the boy would not have died from his injuries even if he had been given a transfusion, all that we can say is that he would probably have had a better chance.
Having said that, having stupid and pointless rules based on a collection of scrolls written anonymously by bronze age barbarians is still a bad idea. How many of these JWs live in something other than a detached house? Joining houses together is forbidden in the Bible as well, why is that rule unimportant while the blood one is non negotiable?
May 18th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
A blood transfusion may or may not have saved his life but it would have improved his odds for sure.
Where does a 15 year old get the idea that blood transfusions are wrong? Did he come to that conclusion himself? Of course not. He was brainwashed, pure & simple. Poor kid never had a chance.
May 18th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Actually, Becky, no one as yet knows what caused the crash. Blaming the driver without knowing the full facts is just as ignorant. The fact that the driver was arrested means nothing as that seems to be normal procedure these days.
Not quite sure how you can defend banning transfusions anyway. They do save lives, if they didn’t, millions spent every year would have been wasted in running and maintaining the blood transfusion service. Even if you still insist that blood transfusions are not needed that is no excuse for brainwashing naive children into making such a decision. As the young boy was a junior, any medical decisions like that would rest on the shoulders of his parents. I wonder just how much input they had into this boy’s treatment and sadly, his death.
May 18th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
I remember a case where a woman did die depriving her twin sons of their mother because of this stupid belief. Jehovah’s Witness are positively evil
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....twins.html
May 18th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Bloodless surgery is not completely bloodless. It significantly reduces the amount of blood lost, true, and there is a possibility that a patient about to undergo surgery could give their own blood, an autologous (sp?) blood transfusion, which I understand the JWs are also against, or could be given a drug cocktail to increase their natural blood-replenishing capability. However, for somebody with extensive internal or external bleeding, there really isn’t a substitute for blood transfusion yet as all that blood is already lost.
There are medical reasons to refuse blood transfusion, but stupidity is not a medically treatable condition.
May 18th, 2010 at 9:48 pm
@alan
No, they are not evil just incredibly simply and undereducated which makes them vulnerable to such superstitious beliefs.I have read some of the literature they placed in my letterbox. It was like bedtime stories for a 5 year old. Religion stultifies the mind, but how good was their education?
May 18th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
@FedupwithR Not evil really remember this guy http://www.thisishullandeastri.....ticle.html an elder in their cult whom the other elders knew was a rapist and a pedophile but did nothing. Or the man who disowned his 5 year old son last month because he had a life saving blood transfusion.
Or even this guy who was able to use the cult to commit acts of sexual assault against young girls. http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk.....5911846.jp. It is an evil cult all right
May 18th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
Why does it not surprise me that an apologist for child-murder, who believes in a god that wants all humans to join a cult that kills its children but has failed to convince the 6.0 billion who are not JWs; so ignorant that she does not know that the Jewish lawmakers banned eating meat still containing blood because the god demanded that the blood be spilled onto the ground so that the god could eat it; and so stupid that she cannot grasp that blood transfusions save lives; is also so illiterate that she writes “would of” instead of “would have”?
May 18th, 2010 at 11:15 pm
CORRECTION: since there are 6.6 billion humans, and only 500,000 of them are JWs, that means that the JW deity has failed to attract 6.55 billion. Even compared to other gods, the JW god is impotent.
May 18th, 2010 at 11:24 pm
The number of humans the child-killing cult has failed to attract is 6.599 billion. If I pushed a wrong button again, then **** it.
May 19th, 2010 at 12:10 am
If you refuse lifesaving treatment isn’t it suicide? Do the JWs prefer suicide to blood transfusions?I suppose this young man will be seen by the deluded JWs as a martyr. I’m sure that must be comforting to his family. What a total waste!
May 19th, 2010 at 12:35 am
Well, shit. Again, so much misinformation and politics flying around about JW’s. Becky is right, JW’s don’t believe in going to heaven, EXCEPT for the 144,000 chosen to rule with Jesus. The rest wait dead in the grave to be resurrected.
But, she is oh so wrong about a better medical treatment than transfusion. While JWs spin that surgeons can clamp bleeding more carefully during surgery, and use blood fillers such as saline solution as effectively, the idea is daft. Saline solution has no red cells to conduct oxygen to the body, no white cells to fight infection, and no platelets to stop bleeding. While admittedly risky, in cases of severe blood loss, it is necessary and logical treatment.
While Becky is interesting to me, a JW going proselytizing on the internet, I’m afraid I must put her down hard, once and for all, on the issue. BDuke said it, even though JWs receive kidney dialosis, when the blood is removed, cleaned and returned, JWs will not allow their blood to be withdrawn presurgery, stored, and returned during surgery. There is absolutely no scripture that supports such a stand, let alone any rationality. It is just a deadly game of grandstanding as they declare, “We are different!”. Meanwhile, some assholes in Brooklyn, New York tell them what to think, as though it was the word of god streaming through the pages of the Watchtower. Rebels without a clue.
Good luck with the whole 1975 thing, Becky. Bad news, this is the only life you get.
NeoWolfe
May 19th, 2010 at 1:18 am
Harwood,
This is too easy. You said: “because the god demanded that the blood be spilled onto the ground so that the god could eat it;”
While it’s true that the Jewish god required that an animal be bled before using it for food, modern science knows that as soon as an animal dies, it’s blood begins to congeal. It continues to flow to some extent by gravity, causing lividity, but all meat still has blood in it. I would just like you to document the part where god eats it.
I assume directed toward Becky, you said: “so illiterate that she writes “would of†instead of “would haveâ€?”
Let me quote you further, just on this thread:
1) “failed to convince the 6.0 billion who are not JWs”
2) ” the JW deity has failed to attract 6.55 billion”
3) “The number of humans the child-killing cult has failed to attract is 6.599 billion
Seems to me it “would of” served you well to proof read yourself first. Next time you feel curious, check out how many aren’t atheist.
NeoWolfe
May 19th, 2010 at 1:28 am
Side-bar,
If you want to shut up a JW on the sacredness of blood, ask them why god created mosquitos, leeches, ticks, lice, and vampire bats? Every one depends on stolen blood to maintain it’s life cycle. He created these species to defy his will????? Insane and absurd.
NeoWolfe
May 19th, 2010 at 2:48 am
It is true that the Torah does not spell out the reason Jews were required to drain the blood before eating meat. I drew the analogy that Jews spilling blood onto the ground was equivalent to Greeks spilling wine onto the ground to feed the shades in Tartaros. It is not a unanimous conclusion among biblical scholars, and I am not going to say that a person who questions my conclusion on the matter must be wrong.
May 19th, 2010 at 3:09 am
It should be kept in mind that there is a big difference between precipitously clicking “send” before a comment has been corrected, and not knowing the difference between a verb and a preposition.
May 19th, 2010 at 9:07 am
Presuming that his death was in fact due to a lack of blood which could have been solved with a transfusion, I, for one, am somewhat thankful that his superstition resulted in his own death and not the death of someone else.
All of us to some extent probably hold superstitious beliefs. But its when those beliefs cause death or injury to others do they become particularly egregious. At least this fellow applied it to himself, as opposed to a parent killing a child by withholding treatment.
May 19th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Bloodless surgery is all well and good – but there is a huge difference between a planned out-patient surgery where the surgeon has all the test results provided in good time with the necessary equipment and surgical consumables available – and an A&E situation where the surgeon’s options are severely restricted by a stupid superstition.
The accident may have done extensive damage. He might have died anyway. However, if his injuries were survivable, his chances were dramatically diminished by this idiocy.
And I don’t have much sympathy for his “family” – pity about them.
May 19th, 2010 at 11:38 am
@Alan
There are manipulative and deranged people every where but religions do seen to have more than their fair share. However, just as there is a difference between the Vatican and the millions of simple minded catholic followers there must be a difference between JW dogma and it’s simple minded adherents.
I confess to knowing little about JWs. At one stage the French government tried unsuccessfully to ban them considering them a sect.
The story of the 5 year old abandoned by his father is horrendous and incomprehensible.
I was unable to access Hullandeastriding but the Yorkshire Post story is just another paedophile story. What struck me most was that yet again, the culprit is of Irish descent!
I
May 19th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
My understanding of the position of JWs regarding blood transfusions is that they refuse them because of the fact that pagans did either partake of blood (the “life” of a creature) or offered blood to their “gods”. The verses that they use are these:
Gen. 9:4. “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.”
Acts 15: 28/29. “Abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication.”
It seems to me that the essential thing here is NOT to mimic pagans in any way, however innocently, which is the reason that many evangelicals refuse to eat black pudding, though quite what that has to do with receiving a blood transfusion I can’t see!
May 19th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
More here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/l.....99129.html
May 19th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
NeoWolfe: Your argument is a non-starter! You must surely realize that to fundamentalists like JWs, the earth is under a curse because of Adam’s sin, so God did NOT create mosquitoes, leeches and so on to feed on blood, any more than He actually created carnivores! Adam and Eve were vegetarians, and mankind only began to eat meat when God gave instructions to that effect to Noah after the Flood. In their fairy-tale New World “the lion shall lay down with the lamb”, all animals will be vegetarian and non-aggressive again, there will be no sickness, pain or death, and everything will be hunky dory!!
May 19th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
There seems to be something missing from this report. Nowhere does it say “Doctors attempted to have the boy made a ward of court so that he could be compelled to have a blood transfusion. Unfortunately he died before a magistrate could be found.”
Surely at 15 he’s below the age of consent and so below the age of refusal. It’s not even clear that his parents were present to reinforce any refusal.
May 19th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Why debate the minutiae of a delusive system? Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse blood transfusions based upon their religious beliefs – PERIOD. What purpose does it serve to identify the specific elements of their misguided belief system that prevent them from accepting blood transfusions? You can’t challenge the logic of the deluded; what would be the point? These people are blind to reason. They revel in the misconception that they are “special”, rather like the Muslims and any number of other religious sheepfolds and they would sooner die than see their genuinely held beliefs compromised.
From an atheist’s perspective it’s all very sad.
May 19th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Heather – They do have “logic” of sorts, though it would be very strange to us as it only exists bounded by their fantasy world. It would be to us like trying to disect Harry Potter’s laws of magic. To us, it could be an interesting mental exercize, though we recognize the insignificance of it in the real world. To them, it is real.
May 20th, 2010 at 7:14 am
Bjohn said,
“pagans did either partake of blood (the “life†of a creature) or offered blood to their “godsâ€.”
Well, that would be the real rub wouldn’t it, that the blood of Jesus was a sacrifice for our sins that redeamed all of us, before Yahweh. Quite a paradox, wouldn’t you say?
Further quote: “NeoWolfe: Your argument is a non-starter! You must surely realize that to fundamentalists like JWs, the earth is under a curse because of Adam’s sin, so God did NOT create mosquitoes, leeches and so on to feed on blood, any more than He actually created carnivores!”
You have a much better than average understanding of JW dogma, but, if such an response was raised to the issue, one can use the fact that they believe the six creative days were actually thousands of years, and that we live in the seventh sabbath day in which god rested. He can therefore no longer create or recreate any species. While its true that it is unlikely to jar their blinders, it is much more than a non starter. They are instantly fascinated if they realize you know the bible, which renders them temporarily open to having their faith slashed apart on every front. But, they will take their new doubts and go home and pray until their blindness is restored. But, it’s still entertaining.
NeoWolfe
May 21st, 2010 at 5:45 pm
NeoWolfe,
You are a wicked man.
Heather Flight.
May 22nd, 2010 at 5:02 am
Heather Flight accused me:
“You are a wicked man.”
Utterly false. I can, in fact, prove that I am a talking snake.
NeoWolfe
July 29th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Once again I find this sad as I did the admittedly false reporting of the boy being disowned by his parents. Someone actually said that people WANT their child to die. Everyone here is calling JW’s ignorant but no one comments on this. I also am of the opinion that it is odd that whenever someone who is a Jehovah’s Witness dies after refusing a blood transfusion it is news. Is it news when someone of comparatively severe injuries dies after receiving a blood transfusion that their severely weakened bodies rejected and thus died when maybe a non-blood alternative could have been used? Too many Doctors are not educated to ALL possibilities. So it is a blood transfusion or nothing and then it is put on the patient for the doctors lack of education. How is that not negligence? Since when has all or nothing or only one way been the accepted form? Only when people want to harass someone. So the ones seeking alternatives are the narrow minded ones? Seems like it may be the Doctors and a fair share of those commenting here.