“Now I want to discuss one of the components of blood that JWs will not accept which is plasma.” What is plasma?

 Plasma is the liquid portion of human blood. It is straw-colored. Blood is a mixture of two components: cells and plasma.(I think I left out this statement because of time constraints.)

Witnesses can take the two important blood products or “fractions” made from plasma although they don’t know about one of them. To make them, a frozen bag of plasma undergoes a controlled thaw to a certain temperature and using a cold centrifuge and a squeezing process done in an expresser apparatus, plasma is separated into two blood products of different concentrations. One of the blood products ends up in a satellite bag and it is called cryosupernatant.  

Cryosupernatant is soluble. It’s a 99% percent watery substance. This product is not documented in WT literature at all, so JWs don’t know they can take it, but a phone call to Bethel revealed they can. And the Hospital Liaison Teams know that it is on the okay list, but they are not permitted to mention it unless asked by doctor or patient.

The portion remaining in the original bag is termed cryoprecipitate and it also contains a concentration of cryoglobulins.  During the separation process, Cryoprecipitate goes to the bottom of the bag. It’s insoluble, or can’t be dissolved in a liquid and is approximately 1% of the original plasma. Cryoprecipitate and cryosupernatant are both plasma with differing concentrations of cryoglobulins or proteins. That’s all. The constituents of these products are the same.  

By far the primary difference between these two blood products is that one contains nearly all the original water of the donated plasma. Let me repeat: The Watchtower organization’s blood doctrine does not forbid Witnesses from accepting transfusion of cryoprecipitate or cryosupernatant, although cryosupernatant is not advertised by JWs.

 And, what if I was a JW and needed cryosupernatant to save my life or one of my family members needed it? No one would tell me about it so I couldn’t make an “informed” decision. This is tantamount to criminal and could result in death. For instance, Refractory Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome Is improved by using cryosupernatant as a replacement fluid. This is a life-threatening condition. 

When WT blood doctrine requires Witnesses to abstain from plasma they are not when they use these products. And these products are called plasma in medical literature.”