It's always great to read stories like the following of progress being made toward helping people with serious illness:
Green tea compound appears effective in leukemia treatment (Postbulletin.com: Rochester, MN)
While my intention is not to disparage anyone's religion, I can't help but think the "green tea" aspect seems like it could be a possible challenge to the teachings of the Mormon Church, which prohibits its members from drinking green or black tea (though herbal tea is okay). I wonder if any further prohibition of a specific compound may depend on whether green tea is used in the manufacturing process? My understanding is that Jehovah's Witnesses had prohibitions against any product derived from human blood--a substance similarly prohibited in that religion, but with heretofore potentially much more dire consequences for human well-being. My understanding is also that Jehovah's Witnesses have recently looked at somewhat relaxing their previously hard-line stance to allow individual member choice (of accepting certain blood-derived products). In each religion, the emphasis is on obedience, so the member who in good conscience wants to seek life-saving treatment may have an extraordinarily delicate task in persuading the powers that be that their action does not stem from willful disobedience to church authority, but from decency and reason. The implicit accusation there being that the church is being unreasonable, which of course does not sit well with those in authority. It's hard enough to have to face a life-threatening illness; combining that with the potential withdrawal of support from one's worship community at precisely the time that such support is truly needed--sure seems like a lot of stress to put an individual through.
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I got to thinking. Though the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses I've met are equally nice people, I'd have to give the nod to the Mormons for being a tad more reasonable as far as enforcement of church doctrine. I'm thinking they'd make an exception for life-saving use of an otherwise prohibited compound (green tea). I hope the Jehovah's Witnesses will follow in that same vein (no pun intended).
So, the new rules, respectively, would go like this:
Green Tea: can't drink it; can't smoke it; *can* take it in pill form.
Blood: can't drink it; can't shed it (existing prohibition against military service); *can* transfuse it
