A nine-year-old boy has been denied a kidney transplant by a hospital because his father, the intended donor, has not been vaccinated for the coronavirus:
Nine-year-old Tanner Donaldson suffers from stage 5 chronic kidney disease and urgently needs a kidney transplant. Miraculously, his father, Dane, is a perfect match to donate one of his kidneys. In early 2018, Cleveland Children’s Hospital approved the transplant. Shockingly, however, the hospital is now denying Tanner’s transplant following the execution of a “cruel, illogical, and unscientific” policy that demands the donor—but not Tanner—to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Both the boy and his dad earlier contracted and then recovered from COVID-19, and therefore have natural immunity, so the father doesn’t logically need to be vaccinated. As the family’s lawyer pointed out to Jane Jankowski, Director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Bioethics that made the decision blocking the transplant operation:
CDC’s Director, Dr. Walensky, has acknowledged that the COVID-19 vaccines do not “prevent transmission.” In contrast to this failure of the vaccines, as conceded by the CDC on Nov. 5, 2021, there has yet to be one documented case of a person who “(1) never received a COVID-19 vaccine; (2) was infected with COVID-19 once, recovered, and then later became infected again; and (3) transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to another person when reinfected.” In fact, several independent studies confirm that reinfections for COVID-19 are exceedingly rare and reaffirm the durability of natural immunity.
But the hospital would rather let a nine-year-old die from kidney failure then let him receive a working kidney from his father, simply because his dad didn’t get vaccinated.
The family’s options reportedly are limited. Obtaining a transplant takes time. The hospital had originally approved this transplant four years ago, and to get another hospital to give the boy a transplant quickly may be difficult, if not impossible.
Thus, a little boy could die just because hospital “ethicists” demand that everyone follow a rigid and callous rule.
