A 12-year-old girl who is a distant relative of Vice President JD Vance was denied a heart transplant because she’s not vaccinated against COVID-19 and the flu, her parents told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Adaline Deal, who is related to the vice president by marriage through his half-siblings, is in need of a transplant after being born with Ebstein’s anomaly and Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, two rare heart conditions. The child, who was adopted from China at the age of 4, has received treatment at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for years and her parents hoped she’d be able to get a transplant there, however, the hospital requires patients to be vaccinated and wouldn’t allow an exemption for the family’s claim that doing so would go against their religious beliefs as nondenominational Christians.
“I thought, wow. So, it’s not about the kid. It’s not about saving her life,” said Janeen Deal, Adaline’s mother, in response to the hospital’s decision.
Janeen said she and her husband believe vaccines are unsafe and opted not to vaccinate Adaline against COVID-19 or the flu after “the Holy Spirit put it on our hearts.” Vaccinations against preventable diseases are, however, recommended for patients undergoing transplants as they will be much more vulnerable to infections during the procedure.
Patients like Adaline dealing with severe illness are at a higher risk of death if infected with COVID-19 than others, according to Dr. Camille Kotton, the clinical director of transplant and immunocompromised host infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“The first year after transplant is when they’re at highest risk for infection, but they do have a lifelong risk of severe disease and transplant patients are still dying because of COVID-19,” Kotton said via the New York Post.
Janine, however, is confident that Adaline nor their 11 other children won’t experience any issues with COVID-19 after the transplant.
“We’ll take it as we can if it happens,” she told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “But I know I cannot put this (vaccine) in her body knowing what we know and how we feel about it.”
Recent Comments