The issue of blood transfusions has become a real problem for them for the reason you state; transfusions have become much safer and a very reliable way to save lives. Due to this and other issues (ie, the risk to hemophiliacs) they have changed their stance considerably over time. Read this and you'll see that although they insist that they do not accept blood transfusions, they've gutted the policy with so many exceptions and changes that you wonder how long it will be before they simply admit that they got it wrong.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
