Jehovah's Witnesses Ease Ban on Blood Transfusion Components
The Governing Body said individual Witnesses may now decide on red cells, white cells, plasma and platelets, but whole-blood transfusions remain banned.
- On Friday, the Jehovah's Witnesses announced a policy update allowing members to receive medical treatments involving blood derivatives, including plasma, platelets, and red and white blood cells, while maintaining a prohibition against whole blood transfusions.
- The organization's longstanding opposition to transfusions stems from Bible passages requiring believers to "abstain" from blood, marking the second revision this year to one of the group's most distinctive religious teachings.
- Governing Body member Geoffrey W. Jackson stated "each Christian must make his own personal decision" regarding these components, and the update permits members to decide whether to donate blood for others' medical treatments.
- Critics, including former members, have long argued that the teaching led to preventable deaths; the organization reported a U.S. membership of 1.3 million in 2025, with a worldwide membership of 9.2 million.
- International spokesperson Paul Gillies emphasized that members should not make decisions on using blood products lightly, advising them to pray and study to reach a decision they feel "happy about with your God.
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JEHOVAH’S Witnesses have relaxed their ban on blood transfusions, allowing members to receive blood components. The decision is a matter of personal conscience, but whole blood transfusions remain prohibited.
In 1940, a magazine of Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrated that a transfusion had helped save a woman’s life. Five years later, the organization began teaching that receiving blood was contrary to a Bible command. That interpretation marked for decades the medical decisions of its faithful, came to court and was presented as an example of faith even in stories of minors who died after refusing a transfusion. Now, two decisions of the Governing Body i…
In the future, Jehovah's Witnesses will be allowed to accept blood components — a historic turnaround — which will change and apply to millions of believers.
Each witness would decide for themselves whether they can use parts of another person's blood in their own treatment. According to a HUS doctor, people who refused blood transfusions have died.
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