Patient who refused to get jabbed against Covid-19, denied heart transplant by Boston Hospital

The hospital said research has shown that transplant recipients are at higher risk than non-transplant patients of dying from Covid-19, and that its policies are in line with the recommendations of the American Society of Transplantation and other health organizations.

Patients also must meet other health and lifestyle criteria to receive donated organs, and it’s unknown if DJ Ferguson did or would have met them.

Brigham & Womens Hospital also stressed that no patient is placed on an organ waitlist without meeting those criteria, and rejected the notion that a transplant candidate could be considered “first on the list” for an organ — a claim Ferguson’s family made in its fundraising post.

“There are currently more than 100,000 candidates on waitlists for organ transplantation and a shortage of available organs — around half of people on waiting lists will not receive an organ within five years,” the hospital said.

Hospitals in other states have faced similar criticism for denying transplants to patients who weren’t vaccinated against Covid-19.

In Colorado last year, a woman suffering from late-stage kidney disease said she was denied a transplant by her hospital because she was unvaccinated. Leilani Lutali, a born-again Christian, said she opposed immunization because of the role that fetal cell lines play in some vaccines’ development.

There is a scarcity of donor organs, so transplant centers only place patients on the waiting list whom they deem the most likely to survive with a new organ.

“A donor heart is a precious and scarce gift which must be cared for well,” said Dr. Howard Eisen, medical director for the advanced heart failure program at Penn State University in Hershey, Pennsylvania. “Our goal is to preserve patient survival and good outcomes post-transplant.”

The United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit that manages the country’s organ transplant system, doesn’t track how many patients refusing to get a Covid-19 vaccine have been denied transplants, said Anne Paschke, an organization spokesperson.

Individuals who are rejected organ transplants have the right to seek treatment elsewhere, she said, however it is up to individual institutions to select which patients to put to the national waiting list.

DJ Ferguson was admitted to the hospital in late November for a heart condition that caused his lungs to fill with blood and fluid, according to the online campaign. He was subsequently moved to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where surgeons implanted an emergency heart pump, which the family claims is simply a stopgap measure.

“It’s devastating,” Tracey Ferguson said. “No one ever wants to see their child go through something like this.”