1. Nowadays most people assume that the transfusing of blood into a patient is a safe, effective therapy.

2. Instead of transfusing blood, doctors in Japan recently treated an anemic premature baby with erythropoietin, a hormonal substance that stimulates red blood cell formation.

3. In 1977, Ott and Cooley9 reported on 542 cardiovascular operations performed on Witnesses without transfusing blood and concluded that this procedure can be done “with an acceptably low risk.”