By K. Walker
A woman has been told that she may be dropped from the transplant list because she hasn’t taken a vaccine for coronavirus.
Annette Lewis, of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada suffers from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a terminal condition affecting both of her lungs. As of two months ago, the 56-year old’s lung capacity was 40%. Lewis needs a lung transplant or she will die. She has been on the transplant waiting list for the past two-and-a-half years.
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Lewis was told that she is now second in line for a transplant, but one of the doctors at the University of Alberta in Edmonton has advised her that all pre-transplant patients must receive the vaccine for coronavirus or be removed from the transplant list.
The Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom (JCCF) is representing Lewis and has leaked audio of a recent conversation between Lewis and a doctor on the transplant team giving her an ultimatum to get vaxxed or be dropped from the list.
Throughout the conversation, the oxygen machine that Lewis uses can be heard in the background.
Here is a partial transcript of the 12-minute audio beginning at around the 10-minute mark.
Doctor: …I can’t promise you you won’t have a reaction, but as somebody that manipulates the immune system on a regular basis, I am very comfortable suggesting — and kind of not suggesting but saying you have to do this or we’re going to have to put you on hold.
Lewis: What do you mean?
Doctor: It means that our program has decided that we need to do everything that we can to optimize the benefit to our recipients and to optimize the use of our donors, so all of our pre-transplant patients are going to be required to have the COVID vaccine.
Lewis: So, what you’re saying to me is if I don’t take the vaccine then I go off the donor list, is that what you mean?
Doctor: Yeah.
Lewis: Yeah? Wow. That’s pretty scary.
Doctor: Yeah.
Lewis: If I don’t get the vaccine, I’m not going to get the transplant, and well, we all know what the end result of that is for me.
Doctor: Yeah.
Lewis: It’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t in my case.
Doctor: Yes.
Lewis has had all of her childhood vaccinations but has concerns about this particular vaccine, especially with her deadly lung condition.
The JCCF also posted a list of concerns that Lewis has with these particular vaccines.
- The vaccines have not been fully authorized by Health Canada. They are being used under “Interim Authorization” in Canada, with human clinical trials continuing until 2023.
- Covid vaccines have caused notable side effects, including nearly 7,000 reported deaths between December 2020 and June 2021, according to the US Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS).
- Health Canada has placed warning labels on the Covid vaccines for adverse events such as blood clotting, myocarditis, pericarditis, and Bell’s Palsy.
- Finally, informed consent is the standard for all medical interventions. The FDA factsheet for the healthcare provider reads, “The recipient or their caregiver has the option to accept or refuse (Pfizer-BioNTech) vaccine.”
The JCCF also states, “Ms. Lewis notes that the Nuremburg Code, which was enacted after WWII following coercive and forced experimentation on captives by German military officials, requires patients to be able to ‘exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force.’”
On Sept, 2, the JCCF sent a legal demand to Dr. Rhea Varughese, Assistant Professor at the Lung Transplant Program at the University of Alberta regarding the requirement for all double-lung transplant recipients to receive a vaccine that is still under emergency-use authorization in Canada.
“The hospital’s conduct in making an ultimatum of this nature to a terminally ill patient is coercive and unethical. Threatening a patient’s access to life-saving medical treatment for not participating in an experimental treatment for a condition she does not have and may never get is a profound violation of Ms. Lewis’ human dignity, personal autonomy, and her constitutionally protected right to life, liberty and security of the person,” said JCCF staff lawyer Allison Pejovic.
“If Ms. Lewis is removed from the transplant list she will die. This is a gross violation of her freedom of choice. Having to choose between taking an experimental vaccine that she does not want, or certain death, is not a choice,” Ms. Pejovic concludes.
Imagine thinking it’s moral to tell a dying woman that she needs to take a vaccine that is still under “emergency use” in her country before she can get a transplant that will save her life.
What happened to medical ethics?
