We meet Gillies at the Jehovah’s Witnesses UK headquarters set in 85 acres of Essex countryside. It is a vast modern complex where hundreds of volunteer followers of the faith live and work without pay.
He insists the basic teaching has not changed and that the transfusion of whole blood is still prohibited. However, for decades, most transfusions have not used whole blood, instead using the specific components of blood that are needed by the patient.
The change is being justified by permitting the use of blood components, like plasma and red blood cells and platelets, in the huge numbers of medical procedures that were previously banned.
Gillies says the Bible references “abstaining from blood” but not “various components that could be extracted from blood”.
He says the Governing Body felt it their duty to avoid scriptural “overreach” and only apply what was specifically described in the Bible.
But that explanation has stunned many and led them to ask if it was not a huge overreach 81 years ago to ban blood transfusions in the first place, when transfusions are not specifically mentioned in the bible.
Others are then also asking why it has taken so long to come to this landmark decision, given that transfusions that do not use whole blood have been the norm for decades.
These are questions Jacob asked as soon as the ban was lifted, just days after a memorial service for Isaac.
Jacob, who had already left the Jehovah’s Witness faith he was brought up in, texted prominent figures from Isaac’s congregation in Texas after Isaac’s death. The messages are full of angst, and painful to read.
He asked them to consider “the part you played in encouraging so many people to sacrifice their life for something that was never God’s will”.
Most did not reply, but one “elder” responded saying he could not understand why Jacob was so angry and fixated on the policy shift.
This all further infuriated Jacob, who particularly wants the faith’s decision-makers to be accountable for all the lives lost.
“I want to ask them if they could apologise directly, I would like not to have a deflected answer, just straightforward apology,” he says.
It is extremely difficult to say how many Jehovah’s Witnesses, among the estimated nine million followers of the faith worldwide, died each year having refused treatment involving blood transfusions. But research in one medical journal in 2016, The Obstetrical & Gynecological Survey, put the figure at around 1,100.
“We’re sympathetic to their feelings, and if individuals have lost family members and are concerned about some of these questions, they deserve to be heard compassionately,” says Gillies.
But there was little clarity about why the change did not come earlier.
“Why has it taken this time? Well, I guess because it takes time, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there is some magic change that’s taken place,” says Gillies.
And when asked, Gillies deflects calls for the leadership to apologise, saying that many lives had, in fact, been saved because faithful Jehovah’s Witnesses had not been exposed to blood contamination scandals.
He also insists that even after the new edict, some Jehovah’s Witnesses could still decide they did not want to accept a transfusion, and that may have been the case even if the edict had come years ago.
Indeed, the BBC spoke with Alex Ball, 58, a Jehovah’s Witness from West Sussex, who says in 2012 a doctor told him he would not survive the chemotherapy he needed to treat his blood cancer unless he also had a transfusion.
“I wanted to adhere as closely to the scriptures as possible when I was sick, and I think I did that well.”
With help from what is called “a Jehovah’s Witness Hospital Liaison Committee”, Alex found an American consultant who could perform a treatment to boost Alex’s blood cells without the need for any products from someone else. His UK consultant agreed to treat him using the new method and it worked.
More than a decade later, Alex says he would make the same decision again, despite the change in blood policy that would have permitted the transfusions he had been told he needed.
It is not just receiving blood which has been an issue.
Elisha Cummings, 50, a Jehovah’s Witness from Trinidad and Tobago, was unable to donate blood to her aunt, who died, because of the rules.
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