Jehovah’s Witnesses: 2026 Blood Decision Changes from Autologous Blood to Donor Blood Components

March 2026: a patient’s own blood

In March 2026, AABB reported a change concerning autologous blood collection, storage and later transfusion. The decision could be made by the individual patient. This concerned the patient’s own blood.

September 2026: components from another person’s blood

On 18 September 2026, Jehovah’s Witnesses announced a separate and broader change. Each individual may now decide whether to accept red cells, white cells, plasma or platelets from another person’s blood. The individual may also decide whether to donate blood for the purpose of providing components or fractions to another person.

The position concerning transfusion of whole blood remains unchanged. AABB reported the change on 21 September as an extension of individual decision-making to allogeneic blood components.

Blood performs different functions

In profound anemia and severe blood loss, one of the most time-critical problems is the loss of hemoglobin-mediated oxygen transport and delivery. That is the physiological function addressed by hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs).

HBOCs have already been used when donor red cells were not an option

This is not only a theoretical concept. In the United States, HBOC-201 (Hemopure) has been used through FDA Expanded Access and compassionate-use mechanisms in patients with life-threatening anemia when conventional red-cell transfusion could not be used, including Jehovah’s Witness patients.

Published clinical literature documents multiple survivors after HBOC-201 was used as an oxygen-carrying bridge while clinicians treated the underlying cause of anemia and supported recovery of the patient’s own red-cell mass.

BHOC perspective

BHOC — Biological Hemoglobin Oxygen Carrier — is being developed within the HBOC field around the oxygen-transport and oxygen-delivery function of hemoglobin. The relevant question is not whether one technology reproduces every function of blood, but whether controlled hemoglobin-based oxygen delivery can provide another option when that specific physiological function is urgently needed.