Boston Patient Denied Heart Transplant Over Refusing COVID-19 Vaccines

People walk outside of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts in a file photo. Darren McCollester/Getty Images

A Boston hospital removed a patient from a heart transplant waiting list because he refused to get the COVID-19 vaccines.

“My son has gone to the edge of death to stick to his guns,” David Ferguson, father of the patient, told CBS Boston on Monday. “His heart has now deteriorated so much to the point where it won’t work.”

The patient, DJ Ferguson, 31, is waiting for a heart transplant because his heart and lungs are filled with blood and fluid. But the hospital took him off the list of heart transplants for his refusal of COVID-19 vaccines.

“It’s kind of against his basic principles. He doesn’t believe in it,” the father told the outlet. “I think my boy is fighting pretty damn courageously, and he has integrity and principles he really believes in, and that makes me respect him all the more.”

The hospital—Brigham and Women’s Hospital—said that the COVID-19 vaccines are required.

“Our Mass General Brigham healthcare system requires several CDC-recommended vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine, and lifestyle behaviors for transplant candidates to create both the best chance for a successful operation and to optimize the patient’s survival after transplantation, given that their immune system is drastically suppressed,” the hospital said in a statement sent to The Epoch Times.

“Post any transplant, kidney, heart, whatever, your immune system is shut off,” Dr. Arthur Caplan, head of Medical Ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told CBS Boston. “The flu could kill you. A cold could kill you. COVID could kill you. The organs are scarce. We are not going to distribute them to someone who has a poor chance of living when others who are vaccinated have a better chance post-surgery of surviving.”

However, Dr. Peter McCullough, a renowned cardiologist, and epidemiologist, called the denial “unethical, immoral.”

“Denying a patient an organ transplantation on the basis of an investigational, ineffective, and categorically unsafe vaccine is itself unethical, immoral. And from a clinical and civil perspective, it’s illegal,” McCullough told NTD, a sister media of The Epoch Times.

“These vaccines cause heart damage. It’s called myocarditis. Under no circumstances would a good doctor ever expose a patient with heart failure who’s awaiting a transplant. Under no circumstances would a doctor expose that patient to one of these vaccines,” McCullough said. “Those doctors need a reexamination of their position on this because it’s creating personal harm to that individual. It’s effectively a form of personal injury.”

It’s not the first time a patient was denied transplant for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

In September 2021, the University of Colorado Hospital made headlines for rejecting a patient, Leilani Lutali, for a kidney transplant after she refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Another Colorado patient, Dawn McLaughlin, was also denied a kidney transplant for the same reason by the same hospital in the same month.

In response to McLaughlin’s case, the next month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that the state will not require a COVID-19 vaccine for an organ transplant.

McLaughlin has since been connected with UT Southwestern in Dallas, Texas. The hospital has offered to assist McLaughlin, only requiring a rapid COVID-19 test.

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit that manages the U.S. organ transplantation system, the COVID-19 vaccine requirements are not mandated for transplant facilities.

“Each transplant hospital makes its own decisions about listing candidates according to the hospital’s best clinical judgment, including whether or not any specific vaccination is part of their eligibility criteria,” the network states on its website.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.