JWTruth.orgDocumented comparison resource
Search

Blood doctrine · Claim record

A box on page 13 gathers eight quotations on transfusion risk, three of them attributed to a named doctor and none of them carrying a volume, issue or page number; the figure it attributes to the New England Journal of Medicine of 14 December 1989 — that one unit of blood may carry enough virus to cause up to 1.75 million infections — corresponds arithmetically to the mean plasma titre of 3,500 tissue-culture-infective doses per millilitre reported in that issue for patients with AIDS, multiplied by the volume of a unit; a tissue-culture-infective dose is a laboratory measure of infection of cells in culture, and neither paper in that issue discusses transfusion or numbers of people infected.

Claim ID claim-blood-1994-dangers-box-citationsConcerns 22 May 1994Context
Context · 22 May 1994 Supported

A box on page 13 gathers eight quotations on transfusion risk, three of them attributed to a named doctor and none of them carrying a volume, issue or page number; the figure it attributes to the New England Journal of Medicine of 14 December 1989 — that one unit of blood may carry enough virus to cause up to 1.75 million infections — corresponds arithmetically to the mean plasma titre of 3,500 tissue-culture-infective doses per millilitre reported in that issue for patients with AIDS, multiplied by the volume of a unit; a tissue-culture-infective dose is a laboratory measure of infection of cells in culture, and neither paper in that issue discusses transfusion or numbers of people infected. Awake!, 22 May 1994The New England Journal of Medicine, 14 December 1989The American Journal of Surgery, September 1986

The organisation’s position or later explanation: The box also quotes Professor Charles H. Baron of Boston College Law School that ‘All of American society has benefited… patients in general, are today less likely to be given unnecessary blood transfusions because of the work of the Witnesses’ Hospital Liaison Committees’. This page does not assess whether that claim about blood conservation is correct; no source for it was opened.

Show the evidence (3 sources)
Primary JW publication Verified

Awake!, “Youths Who Have “Power Beyond What Is Normal””

22 May 1994 · p.13 · pars. 64-73 (box on page 13, ‘Dangers of Blood Transfusion’) · Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc.

“The New England Journal of Medicine, issue of December 14, 1989, reported that a single unit of blood may carry enough AIDS virus to cause up to 1.75 million infections!”

A box set between the Lisa Kosack and E.G. accounts gathers eight short quotations on transfusion risk, from the New England Journal of Medicine, the book Autologous and Directed Blood Programs (1987), Dr Charles Huggins (‘It is the most dangerous substance we use in medicine’), Surgery Annual (‘Clearly, the safest transfusion is the one not given’), Dr John S. Spratt in The American Journal of Surgery of September 1986, Emergency Medicine, Pathologist, and Professor Charles H. Baron of Boston College Law School.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and the wording, page marker and paragraph confirmed against the article text.

Corroborated by. src-g-1994-0522-power-beyond-normal, src-g94d-nejm-1989-ho

Notes. The box gives no volume, issue or page number for any of the eight quotations. Three of them name a person (Dr Charles Huggins, Dr John S. Spratt and Dr Charles H. Baron); the other five are attributed only to a journal or a book title.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-g94d-dangers-of-transfusion-box

Peer-reviewed / scholarly Verified

The New England Journal of Medicine, “Quantitation of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 in the blood of infected persons”

14 December 1989 · pp.321(24):1621-1625 · Ho DD, Moudgil T, Alam M · Massachusetts Medical Society

“The mean titers in plasma were 30, 3500, and 3200 tissue-culture-infective doses (TCID) per milliliter for patients with asymptomatic infection, the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and the AIDS-related complex, respectively.”

The 22 May 1994 Awake! box on page 13 attributes to ‘The New England Journal of Medicine, issue of December 14, 1989’ the statement that ‘a single unit of blood may carry enough AIDS virus to cause up to 1.75 million infections’. That issue (vol. 321 no. 24) contains two papers reporting HIV titres in blood: this one and Coombs RW et al., ‘Plasma viremia in human immunodeficiency virus infection’, 321(24):1626-1631 (confirmed on PubMed, PMID 2511447). A tissue-culture-infective dose is a laboratory measure of how much virus is needed to infect cells in culture; neither paper discusses transfusion, units of blood, or the number of people who might be infected.

Official source Link not auto-checkable

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The abstract and bibliographic record were retrieved through the NCBI E-utilities service on 19 September 2026 and read, and retrieved again independently by the auditor; the PubMed web page itself returns HTTP 203 and a cookie wall to automated clients and could not be opened directly. the quoted sentence is from the published abstract. The full text behind the paywall was not opened, and the Awake! box gives no author or page, so the box’s figure could not be traced to a specific sentence in either paper.

Corroborated by. src-g94d-dangers-of-transfusion-box

Notes. The figure in the Awake! box corresponds arithmetically to this paper: 3,500 tissue-culture-infective doses per millilitre multiplied by the roughly 500 millilitres in a unit of whole blood gives 1,750,000. That correspondence is an inference drawn here, not something either paper states; and the 3,500 figure is the mean plasma titre reported for patients who had AIDS, not a figure for donated blood.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-g94d-nejm-1989-ho

Peer-reviewed / scholarly Supported

The American Journal of Surgery, “Blood transfusions and surgery for cancer”

September 1986 · pp.152(3):337 · Spratt JS · Elsevier

“Blood transfusions and surgery for cancer”

The 22 May 1994 Awake! box on page 13 attributes to ‘Dr. John S. Spratt’ in ‘The American Journal of Surgery, issue of September 1986’ the sentence ‘The cancer surgeon may need to become a bloodless surgeon.’ An article by that author, with that title, in that journal and month does exist.

Official source Link not auto-checkable

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The bibliographic record was confirmed on 19 September 2026 through the NCBI E-utilities service: Spratt JS, ‘Blood transfusions and surgery for cancer’, Am J Surg 1986 Sep;152(3):337. The PubMed web page itself returns HTTP 203 and a cookie wall to automated clients, so it could not be opened directly. The text of the article was not opened, so the quoted sentence itself is not verified — only the citation.

Corroborated by. src-g94d-dangers-of-transfusion-box

Notes. The seven other quotations in the same box give no volume or page. Two of them name a person (Dr Charles Huggins and Dr Charles H. Baron) and five are attributed only to a journal or book title; none was traced.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-g94d-spratt-1986

Claim page

A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/evidence/claim-blood-1994-dangers-box-citations/. Every source above opens the original document or the best available copy. If you believe the wording, date or context is wrong, report an error.