"But when you have no time to build up a reserve of blood to transfuse yourself with, when your condition is deteriorating so rapidly that encouraging the body to produce more blood won't work fast enough (or perhaps your body is currently unable to produce enough of it's own blood), what then?"

What you need is VOLUME. Many currently available bloodless alternatives can be used to restore volume AND carry oxygen. I can't remember the name of the product, but one is available that has many, many more times the oxygen carrying capacity of blood. It's not blood that is needed. It is the volume of oxygen carrying fluid that is needed, and those alternatives ARE available.

"Blood letting was based on the flawed assumtion that they could just bleed out the disease." Blood transfusions are based on the flawed assumption that only blood can save a patient in certain circumstances. That is false.

It boils down to what the doctor understands, is trained in, and is capable and willing to do. Again, that has been proven time and time again.

"(Citing a risk of blood-born illness is easily comparable to the risk of catching any number of transmissible diseases while at the hospital...)" It's hard to see how you can make that assertation. Blood is forced into the body via the transfusion. It does not naturally go in, since the body contains it's own blood supply. Without making the substance enter the body, the disease contained in the blood will not enter the patient. Airborne viruses and bacteria need not be forced into the body to cause disease. They enter via natural body processes - breathing is one way. You simply cannot equate something that is introduced via unnatural processes to something that is introduced via natural processes.

It's obvious that there are some who refuse to "step out of their comfort zone" and accept that there are life saving alternatives to blood. That is why this kind of thing keeps happening, and why this thread is soooo long. No insult intended to anyone.