I am a cardiology fellow at the Heart Institute of St. Luke’s Medical Center-Quezon City, and I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Dr. Leonardo L. Leonidas for the article, “Rethinking blood transfusion” (Opinion, 9/13/13). My parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) and I am just one step away from being a baptized JW.
As a doctor, it is not easy to defend our beliefs regarding blood transfusion before my colleagues because, as it is known well, we doctors are not satisfied with explanations that are not scientific or evidence-based. And just showing people the Bible verse on this matter (Acts 15:28) will never convince them. The line admonishes us to “abstain from blood.”
It also seems that doctors here in the Philippines are especially resistant to changes in the practice of transfusion, or else we would already have multiple centers catering to bloodless medicine and surgery, like in the United States, Europe, and other developed Asian countries.
I am truly happy that the Inquirer published a commentary such as this, and I do hope that our Filipino colleagues will take the time to read the article and look into the numerous studies that have already been published abroad regarding bloodless medicine and surgery.
Again, I thank the Inquirer for the article, and in case anyone has some unanswered questions regarding our belief about blood, let me share this link https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/blood/how-can-blood-save-your-life/.
Have a nice day!
—DR. ANGELA APOSTOL-ALDAY,
Sta. Mesa, Manila