A 31-year-old man at a Boston hospital was denied a heart transplant because he refused to get vaccinated.
David Ferguson told CBS that his son, DJ, was at the front of the line to receive a transplant at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, but because he has not received the COVID-19 vaccination he is no longer eligible according to hospital policy.
“It’s kind of against his basic principles; he doesn’t believe in it,” Ferguson told CBS. “So because he won’t get the shot, they took him off the list of a heart transplant.”
Brigham and Women’s released a statement saying, “like many other transplant programs in the United States – the COVID-19 vaccine is one of several vaccines and lifestyle behaviors required for transplant candidates in the Mass General Brigham system in order to create both the best chance for a successful operation and also the patient’s survival after transplantation.”
Ferguson said DJ, the father of two children with a third on the way, is fighting “pretty damn courageously” but he’s running out of time. Still, the family is sticking by his decision to not get vaccinated because “it’s his body. It’s his choice.”
Hospitals in at least two other states, Ohio and Colorado, have made similar decisions to deny transplants to patients who refuse COVID-19 vaccination, according to Insider.
“Post any transplant — kidney, heart, whatever — your immune system is shut off,” Arthur Caplan, the head of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told CBS. “The flu could kill you, a cold could kill you, COVID could kill you. The organs are scarce. We’re not going to distribute them to someone who has a very poor chance of living, when others who are vaccinated have a much better chance post-surgery of surviving.”
DJ has been in hospital since November last year, and he suffers from a hereditary heart issue that causes his lungs to fill with blood and fluid, according to a GoFundMe.
Transplant patients have a much higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than the average person, due to their weakened immune systems.