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Caitlin Raymond: Jehovah’s Witnesses Can Now Accept Their Own Blood But It Is Still Not That Simple

Caitlin Raymond/LinkedIn

Apr 13, 2026, 09:51

Caitlin Raymond: Jehovah’s Witnesses Can Now Accept Their Own Blood But It Is Still Not That Simple

Caitlin Raymond, Assistant Professor of Pathology and Transfusion Medicine at University of Wisconsin-Madison, shared a post on Linkedin:

”On March 20th, the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses issued new guidance: members may now accept autologous blood. Preoperative autologous deposit — long explicitly forbidden — has moved into the personal conscience category.

This is significant. But if you work in transfusion medicine, the headlines don’t quite tell the whole story.

A few things worth knowing:

The conscience zone was already wide before this update. Cell salvage, hemodilution, cardiopulmonary bypass, dialysis — individual decisions for years. The zone just got wider.
Actual clinical practice has always been variable. I’ve cared for Jehovah’s Witness patients who would accept platelets (despite the contamination with allogeneic RBCs), and some who would even accept directed donations from congregation members. Jehovah’s Witness patients are whole, complex people, not policy documents.
Autonomy without access isn’t really autonomy. PAD requires infrastructure that doesn’t exist uniformly across the 200+ countries where Jehovah’s Witnesses live and receive surgical care.
‘It’s now allowed’ doesn’t mean patients will feel free to accept it. Conscience operates inside a community. The conversation at the bedside still requires care, privacy, and time.

The guidance changed. The complexity didn’t.”

Caitlin Raymond: Jehovah’s Witnesses Can Now Accept Their Own Blood But It Is Still Not That Simple